Saturday, October 24, 2009

You don't have to be Jewish

The Klezmatics show at St. Ambrose University in Davenport was even better than I'd hoped it would be. It was one of the most amazing shows I've ever heard in my life! They are one of the most skilled groups of musicians in the folk music world, in my opinion. It blew my mind how seamlessly they moved through the songs as a group while working with all of the virtuosic improvisation of the individual members. The band members were mostly old and familiar - Lorin Sklamberg and Frank London, of course, Matt Darriau, Paul Morisset and Lisa Gutkin. And then they had a guest drummer, whose name I can't remember, but he's from the Herbie Hancock Quartet. He was GREAT.

I was worried that they wouldn't play enough klezmer and would play mostly stuff from their newest album, "Wonder Wheel," which is more acoustic folk (I love that album, but I come to the Klezmatics because I want to hear Klezmer). It was actually the opposite. They played a very good mix of klezmer and the Guthrie projects. They played the most klezmery tunes from "Wonder Wheel" - "Goin' Down To Sea" and "Wheel of Life" - and then three non-klezmer ones, "Gonna Get Through This World," "Mermaid's Avenue," and "Holy Ground." "Holy Ground" was beautiful. They sang it together as a group. I never liked the song "Mermaid's Avenue," but hearing it live really turned me around -- they played it with such an enthusiastic energy that it made me think, "Well, gee, it really is kind of a nice song." And "Gonna Get Through This World" was fine. Susan McKeown sang it on the album, but in concert it was sung by the fiddler, Lisa Gutkin, who did just as fine a job as McKeown. And then they played lots of my old favorites -- "Yo Riboyn Olam," "Man In A Hat," "Klezmorimlach meine libinke," "Davenen," "Katz un moys" (with stunning solos from London, Darriau and Gutkin)...lots of others. AND they played a new one, with lyrics by Michael Israel Wex, about the hangover you have the day after Purim. That was great. Lorin Sklamberg, aware that he was in front of perhaps the least Yiddish audience ever, sang the song with a lot of head-clutching and staggering body language that communicated the meaning of the lyrics quite adequately. And of course, they played their anthem "Ale Brider" when screamed out for an encore.

And then there was the audience! I was so worried when I came in, because it was a very sparsely populated auditorium (it was great for us, because we were in the THIRD ROW - I could almost touch Lorin's accordion). And speaking to people who were coming in, we found that most of the people - mostly local seniors - were there because they had year-long subscriptions to the University's concert series. Most of the people hadn't even heard of the Klezmatics! I guess they're huge in the world music and Jewish music camps, but they're not too widely known here in Iowa. So I thought, "Oh, no, these people aren't going to appreciate it enough, the band will be disappointed by the tiny audience," etc...well, those were just silly and stupid worries, because the thing about the Klezmatics - and modern klezmer in general - is that there's something there for everybody. They encompass so many world traditions that there's something in there anybody can hold onto. The fiddler, for example, also has experience in celtic music (and from the sound of it, bluegrass), and that comes out in her improvisation. And people hear that, and hear something familiar. Klezmer shares ancestors with German music. If anyone has polka in their blood, it's central Iowa farm ladies. And while at first it seemed strange for a klezmer band to be giving a concert at a Catholic university, their songs of praise really brought home the fact that they both worship the same God - there's just different fine print. And as an agnostic, I love them for their anti-fundamentalism and human rights messages. Songs like Guthrie's "Holy Ground" can touch everybody - it's a religious message for some, and a spiritually environmentalist message for others, like me. They are really a band that absolutely anybody can love.

And boy, did they! The audience was quiet and maybe a little bit bemused by a sound they hadn't heard before during the first song. By the last song, everybody was dancing, clapping, singing, yelling for an encore. And they positively flocked around the CD table afterwards. The Klezmatics got some new fans last night, for sure!

The band was really funny about the extremely goyish territory they were in. At the beginning Frank London announced that they were making their debuts this tour in Estonia...and Davenport. One of my favorite jokes was --

LONDON: We're learning a lot about the roots of Davenport...you know...DAVEN-port. [Daven means pray in Yiddish. Maybe 25% of the audience laughed at this.]
SKLAMBERG: Is that some kind of local joke here?
LONDON: Yes - both Jews call it that.

At the end, when they came out for an encore, Lorin Sklamberg said, "Okay -- the first rehearsal of the Davenport Yiddish Choir begins right now." Because you have to sing along with "Ale Brider!" All we had to learn was "Oy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoy, oy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoy..." And EVERYBODY was singing it. It was a great experience. I was really proud of our tiny, colossally goyish Iowa audience for the enthusiasm with which they greeted this band most of them had never heard of, and for the volume of our appreciation - we may not have had a full house, but we made it sound like one. And I hope they'll find their way back to the midwest one day - to Chicago if not li'l old Davenport again. Thank you, Klezmatics, for making my LIFE!

Friday, October 16, 2009

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.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Slightly worrying dream

I dreamed that my mom posed naked with Barack Obama, and it was on the front page of all of the papers.

My dad was upset about it, not because she chose to appear nude, but because she had been dieting too much in preparation for the picture and looked emaciated.

That's my dad all right!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

I really like the way this speech sounds in Yiddish

Zayn oder nit zayn - dos iz di frage:
Tsi iz eydeler far dem gemit tsu laydn
Di shtekh un di fayln fun dem beyzn mazl
Oder aroysgeyn mit gever kegn a yam fun tsores
Un makhn fun zey an end? Shtarbn - shlofn -
Vayter gornisht!

Hakavy, Alexander, "Iz yidish a shprakh fir drame?" Di fraye yidishe folksbine I (1897)

Monday, October 12, 2009

Strange dreams I've had since beginning this blog

Dream 1: I am back in Palma de Mallorca and there is some kind of festival going on which leaves the city center very crowded, and I don't like that, so I walk on the outskirts where it's more deserted. Two policemen stop me and ask for my ID, so I give them my passport. They're just about to OK me when one says "Wait, we should search her backpack just to be safe." They find a lot of books in there, including one by a Basque author, and they question me about it. Suddenly, the city center goes dead still. The policemen say, "Oh no!" and run off. I get scared and hide. Then a scared-looking Spanish woman walks past and whispers "It's him!" to me. A big, tall, scraggly, silent man (whom I've seen handing out religious materials on Clinton Street in real life) comes and places a package near me and runs off. I'm just trying to decide what to do when I wake up.

Dream 2: Both my parents die. This dream SUCKED.

Dream 3: I have a rotten tooth that I keep pulling out over and over and over again. Every time I pull it out, there's a strand of gross, bloody flesh that I also have to pull out of the tooth-hole. And then I get it done and I'm relieved, only to find the damn tooth is right back where I left it. Gross!

Dream 4: I am flying kites with President Obama! He is a pretty good kite flyer.

Dream 5: I'm looking on Craigslist for a shack in the desert that I can rent over summer with Brian.

My head is a weird place to live!

Saturday, October 10, 2009

This is the first post in my blog

It's a very sad thing: I abandoned my heretofore prolific blogging habits in favor of Facebook, and that's not cool. I love Facebook, but it's not the best place for writing, and I feel like getting out of the habit can't be a good idea. And so I vowed to blog again. However, I feel a certain lack of connection with Livejournal anymore, and decided, like so many before me, to move over to Blogger.

This blog will contain all the more in-depth thoughts I can't fit into a Facebook status update. Given the current state of my life it will be a lot of the following: weird dreams I have had, essays about how much I love Vic and Sade, essays about how Calvin and Hobbes is actually Don Quijote, essays and gripes about music, interesting facts about language, gripes about applying for grad school, scans of what little art I do, and pictures I've taken. I also expect to write so much about cooking that I made a second blog for that (food-is-your-friend.blogspot.com).

So, that's the size of it. It's nice if folks are reading this, but unlike back in the Livejournal days, I guess it really doesn't matter to me anymore if they aren't!