The Klezmatics changed my life

Went to Davenport last night with work to be an "IPR Ambassador" at the David Sedaris show. It was fun! He read all new stories -- stuff he's working on, and stuff from his diary. I didn't go get a book signed because I really have had enough of standing in that line, and I've gotten three books signed, so like, leave the guy alone. We gave away lots of IPR pens, but we didn't have any banner or anything at our table so people were like "What do you guys do?" "What are you selling?" "Who ARE you?" Kind of a lack of forethought on the part of the mgmt., I thought. Also, they had us show up two and a half hours early to set up. Except that the bosses actually got there early, set everything up in five minutes, and went back to their hotel room to chill, without letting us drudges know about it. Oh well, there's been a sort of communication problem between the stations ever since the merger. I don't know when it will get sorted out. Everyone was really nice, though, and we had a dinner out at a really fancy place after. More on that in my food blog...

In two weeks, I'll be going back to Davenport for the Klezmatics -- one of my favorite, favorite, favorite bands of all time, who hardly ever come to Iowa -- in fact I've never seen a show in Iowa on any of their tours. They usually stick to the coasts and maybe hit Chicago. But they're coming! It's going to be a real quasi-spiritual experience for me. When I first heard their music in middle school, it started me off on a long and endlessly enjoyable journey of discovery about klezmer, Jewish music, Jewish culture, and generally turned me into the great big embarrassing Yiddish-spouting Tanakh-reading philo-Semite I am today. And I'd like to thank them for all the cultural and intellectual enrichment they have given me.

I love klezmer because I am turned off by the purity and rigidity of strictly-western music (and don't take that the wrong way, because there are plenty of long-dead Germans on my CD shelf). Eastern music has so many great qualities that I can't understand why Western music never used them, or worse, wrote rules forbidding them -- quarter-or-less tones and unusual time signatures and all that. klezmer music has never rejected any influence it's come across. It's still changing. It just keeps moving across the globe, picking up any sound it touches, and incorporating it beautifully into a whole.

I love traditional klezmer music but I think people who say "Oh, the Klezmatics aren't really klezmer" or "The Cracow Klezmer Band isn't strictly klezmer" or "X isn't actually klezmer" are forgetting something very important about the nature of this music. Of course, klezmer has a strict tradition based on devotional music, but it's always been different depending on where it was geographically located. There are Russian and Romanian and Turkish and Bulgarian folk songs in its traditional repertoire. It works with what it's got. That is how it has managed to communicate with people and touch people wherever it goes. And there is no reason it should not continue to do that. Keep on fusin', klezmer.