Frank London
The Klezmer Conservatory Band
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The previous column addressed the seminal approach to klezmer and related Jewish music exemplified by the Klezmatics and some of their side projects. Their music reflects the legacy of the notorious shikers, the nineteenth-century traditional Jewish village "oriental" brass bands, whose intrepid dance-oriented influence would resurface in twentieth-century US klezmer, where clarinet and other woodwinds also found a home.
Clearly, klezmer illustrates a familiar process of cultural borrowing and hybridization (of Eastern European, Balkan, Ottoman and Roma, i.e., Gypsy influences), as manifest by trumpeter Frank London, leader of the Klezmer Brass Allstars. London (whose performance résumé includes the Klezmatics, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Hasidic New Wave and John Zorn) presides over a rollicking, jazz-tinged live recording made at New York's Knitting Factory. Di Shikere Kapelye ("The Inebriated Orchestra") assembles veterans from nearly every US klezmer ensemble on record: Brave Old World, Hasidic New Wave, Kapelye, the Klezmatics, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, KlezMs., the Klezmorim, Les Misérables Brass Band, Naftule's Dream, Paradox Trio, Psychedelicatessen, San Francisco Klezmer Experience, Shekhina, Shirim, the Zlatne Uste Brass Band, and the groups of Sid Beckerman, David Krakauer, Ray Musiker and Andy Statman.
The album extemporizes upon the notorious nineteenth-century traditional Jewish village brass band, whose over-the-top trickster influence on klezmer and beyond is manifest. London and company serve up punch-drunk offerings from klezmer's core repertoire: bulgars, doynes, freylekhs, horas, khosidls and waltzes, together with a dizzying rhythm known as "the oriental," reflecting the musical influence of Odessa and the Carpathians. The anonymous album notes, a paean to libation, are nearly as entertaining as the music itself. Echoing the neighborly influence of (and competition with) Roma fanfaras and Turkish Mehter bands, Di Shikere Kapelye conveys a raucous secular spirituality whose mournful, virtuoso musical parody and near-messianic abandonment, in the time and place of its origins, surely antagonized the Ottoman rulers of the Balkans (as subaltern musicians no doubt intended).
Given the fractious state of global ethnic politics, finding Serbia's Boban Markovic Orkestar, Cairo's Hasaballa Brass Band and New York's Klezmer Brass Allstars collaborating on the same recording may surprise some. But in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the world's great transnational peoples -- Roma, Muslims and Jews -- have long cultivated musical bonds. According to the enigmatic Dr. R. A. Bronner, author of the elliptically provocative album notes to Brotherhood of Brass, the syncopated 3/2 rhythmic figure of the Roma cocek is the same time element that lends its swing to many sacred musics, including the Jewish freylekh, the Turkish ciftitelli, and the clave of the spiritual cults of Afro-Cuban Abakwa, Santería, Lucumí and Brazilian Candomblé.
On Brotherhood of Brass, London assembles some superb players, including English clarinetist Merlin Shepherd (of the German klezmer group Sukke, formerly of Budowitz and The Burning Bush), trombonists Mark Hamilton and David Harris (Klezmer Conservatory Band, Naftule's Dream), the Klezmatics' Matt Darriau (clarinets, alto sax, gaida or Thracian bagpipes), percussionist Aaron Alexander (Hasidic New Wave), and the remarkable Mark Rubin (tuba, bass helicon; formerly of the Austin Klezmorim and the Bad Livers). Then there are London's high-energy guests, Roma trumpeter Markovic, and Abd Elhamid Kamel, Hasaballa Brass Band leader and clarinetist extraordinaire.
Markovic's brass horde lends a potent presence on five tracks, including a dynamic pairing of the stately "Lieberman Husidl" with the full-blast "Lieberman Funky Freylekhs". Hasaballa's reedier brass-and-percussion texture lends a wailing, propulsive North African street feel to "Imayel Ya Khail" and "Shish Kebab". The balance of tunes comes from the Lubovitcher (an accelerating "Wedding in Crown Heights"), Shabbes ("Shalom Aleykhem"), Hasidic and convergent Eastern European traditions. The resulting transnational sonic stew is an articulate polyglot mix, a towering Babel of brass that suffers no fools in its musical hanging gardens.
Indeed, London's attitude toward fusion has helped make klezmer an integral part of the world-music landscape. In a recent interview with Jewish Culture News (Spring 2000), he cited an "inquisitive openness" as the source of inspiration in his personal musical quest. Says London, "My personal versatility as a trumpeter is reflected in how I first came to Jewish music. By learning how to listen, how to study, how to speak different languages musically, how to maintain my own identity while working with others, I have been privileged to work with artists from literally around the world".
From an allied philosophical perspective, but working a more popular vein, US singer and multi-instrumentalist RebbeSoul, an unorthodox voice in Jewish music, packs an eclectic armament of guitars, mandolin, balalaika, bass, keyboards, Middle Eastern percussion and digital sleight-of-hand. Sampling widely from traditional Jewish and Arabic music, rock, funk and hip-hop, RebbeSoul forges a danceable fusion defying easy categorization.
An anthem to peace in the Middle East, Change the World issues a compelling call in "Shalom", inquiring pointedly against insistent Levantine percussion, "Why can't it be now, why can't it be today?" "Esa Enia", an Old Testament text attributed to King David, as adapted by Reb Schlomo Carlebach, enlists the lyrical talents of Neshama Carlebach and rapper Prophet X, with Hendrix-inspired guitar and a driving Middle-Eastern rhythmic figure. In the album's most subtle offering, "Qaafilah" pulls an irresistible bass-and-percussion hook through a tasteful, feedback-dappled guitar solo, yeoman work by Palestinian violinist Nabil Azzam, and a vocal allusion to the Islamic call to prayer. Closing with an affecting vocal effort on "Avinu", a reflective interpretation of a traditional text, RebbeSoul crafts an energetic sound attuned to the title's promise.
In a neighboring Sephardic musical universe, and equally pop oriented, the Hip Hop Hoodios, New York Latino-Jewish proponents of rock and rap en español, testify in English and Spanish. "Hoodio" is a streetwise bilingual play on the Spanish "judio (Jew). The musical conception of MC, bassist and programmer Josue Noriega, the band combines the talents of Federico Fong (bass, drums), Adam Salzman (guitar, vocals) and Abraham Velez (guitar, percussion, vocals). As the slogan on their web site relates, "Servin' phat rhymes like we wuz Venus Williams, if our name was Enron ya know we'd bilk ya billions". No danger of that, but their "Havana Nagila" comes on like "Wooly Bully," sending up the familiar Jewish anthem to a snappy merengue beat, with toss-off lyrics conveying a roguish sense of humor that lampoons common Jewish and Latin stereotypes alike.
As Noriega describes the group's sound, "One part Latin alternative (a la Cafe Tacuba, Puya, Aterciopelados), a hefty chunk of ego and bravado stolen from the schools of Jay-Z and Puffy, tempered with a level of mischief that puts the Hoodios in a camp oft-visited by kindred spirits Ween and Beck". The Balkans, southeastern Europe and Turkey harbored many Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, of course, and the irreverent Hoodios attitude is aligned in spirit with the tumeldik (rowdy) freilachs sound represented by the Klezmatics and others, even if their Sephardic-Latin pop fusion, channeled through the Hispanic Caribbean experience, as transplanted to New York's mean streets, is a long way from the Ashkenazi roots of Eastern European klezmer.
Back to more traditional territory, the Klezmer Conservatory Band (KCB) name might seem to suggest a staid preservationist orientation, but this Boston-based ensemble, making music since 1980, carries the unruly shikere vein of klezmer and Yiddish song into the new century with a contemporary edge, yet without letting go of the music's origins. A regular presence at Klezkamp, the popular klezmer workshop sponsored by New York's Living Traditions, apart from performing, KCB cultivates a cultural-activist stance vis-à-vis the music, does educational outreach in schools and community settings, and has created its own foundation to support klezmer music research, teaching and performance.
Dance Me to the End of Love, KCB's ninth and newest release, stays close to traditional US klezmer territory, and represents what may be their most personal statement to date. The eleven-member ensemble (whose collective armory of traditional instruments would require a paragraph to detail) revives a number of older, lesser-known tunes, many culled directly from earlier generations of performers. They also tap better-known Jewish sources, including clarinetists Naftule Brandwein's "Der Terk in America" (The Turk in America), Schloymke Beckerman ("Tants a Freylekhs," "Yism'khu") and German Goldenshteyn ("Hora"), the last paired with a medley by tsimbl (cymbalom or trapezoidal hammer dulcimer) master Joseph Moskowitz. Likewise, KCB draws on beloved composer Sholom Secunda ("Zol Nokh Zayn Shabes"), and on a contemporary master, taking the album title from Leonard Cohen's wistful, longing composition.
The players are all in top form, providing wonderfully soulful and evocative backing for lead singer Judy Bressler. Bressler's command of klezmer vocal style projects a radiant dramatic presence whose coy edge and gutsy delivery never descend into the clichéd parody that less-accomplished klezmer singers sometimes manifest. On what stands as an exquisitely rendered introduction to US klezmer foundations, KCB performs with a warmth and passion that continues to invigorate the expressive foundations of Jewish traditional song.
Contrast the preceding artists with the project of another US ensemble, Khevrisa. Their sedate, scholarly essay of Eastern European klezmer roots recovers an instrumental genre played by an all-male string ensemble comprising tsimbal, fiddles and bass. On European Klezmer Music, rather than anonymous folk music, Khevrisa (Yiddish for "klezmer ensemble") presents classic instrumentals by distinguished nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish composers. Their repertoire consists mostly of wedding "display" pieces intended for listening rather than dancing; of the 20 tunes, half are recorded here for the first time.
Tsimbal player Zev Feldman, a pioneer of klezmer's 1970s US revival, is a noted scholar of Jewish and Ottoman Turkish music. His authoritative 40-page album notes constitute an excellent primer on klezmer history. Feldman shares musical direction with fiddler Steven Greenman (formerly of the traditionalist group Budowitz), superbly backed on sekund or contra-fiddle by Klezmatics co-founder Alicia Svigals and Michael Alpert (who studied with Leon Schwartz, tradition bearer of the older European klezmer fiddle sound), with Stuart Brotman on acoustic bass. (The latter two also play with the klezmer band Brave Old World.) A haunting, introspective melancholy suffuses this stately rediscovery of klezmer roots, which movingly evokes the music's sustained cultural dialogue with Eastern European, Roma, Balkan and Turkish traditions.
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Note: Part three of New Jewish Roots follows in the next column, considering a seeming historical paradox, klezmer music's growing popularity in Europe.
