Klezmer’s Afterlife: An Ethnography of the Jewish Music Revival in Poland and Germany by Magdalena Waligórska (review)

In Klezmer’s Afterlife, Magdalena Waligórska seeks to prise open one of the most contentious topics in recent discourses on Jewish music: the widespread enthusiasm for and participation in contemporary klezmer music by (largely) non-Jewish Poles and Germans. Observing that previous literature exploring this topic, both popular and academic, has tended to focus on questions of legitimacy rather than explore the encounters and motivations of non-Jewish Polish and German musicians who engage with klezmer (p. 8), Waligórska lays out an admirably detailed historical and social context for the contemporary revival of pre-Holocaust east European Jewish music in Poland and Germany, and explores the place of klezmer music in identity conversations, both individual and national, based upon a comprehensive series of interviews with musicians in Berlin and Krakow undertaken during 2004–8.

This is a book about discourse. Early chapters reflect on the ‘appropriation’ of ethnically coded music and the representation of Jews in the klezmer scene; the second part of the book turns to particularly highly charged issues, including the politics of memory, the negotiation of individual identities, and the role of non-Jewish musicians ‘standing in’ for absent ethnic Jews during performance events. The inclusion of substantial interview segments and the careful pulling apart of threads of discourse—from a redemptive, inclusive view of klezmer to complex feelings of guilt—enrich the discussion, as well as inviting wider comparison with outsider involvement in other ‘ethnic’ music scenes. Particularly refreshing is the way that issues of identity and post-Holocaust memory are explored within a European—primarily Polish—frame of discourse, whose configurations sometimes implicitly challenge the models of multiculturalism and plural identities often assumed in American and western European settings. Waligórska also helpfully differentiates between identity discourses in Poland, where the klezmer scene accompanied a general revival of interest in things Jewish, and Germany, where much of the memory work was done before klezmer rose to popularity (p. 275).

Surprisingly, however, for a book focusing on a musical phenomenon, the absent Other of this volume is music itself: there is very little detailed reference to the musical practices of the musicians and ensembles mentioned in the book. Only relatively rarely do we learn which specific repertories individual musicians play and in what style, how they learned klezmer music, and how this relates to other elements of their musical lives; a little more attention is given to song lyrics, and to visual material (stage costumes and CD covers). This is a startling omission. While Waligórska’s desire to focus on identity debates is clear, seeking to show ‘how a music revival can become a site of difficult debates on troubled intergroup relations’ (p. 16), the omission of musical practice from this book impacts on the discussion in some very substantial ways.

First, by sidelining musical practice, Waligórska significantly limits her terms of debate. Notwithstanding her statement that ‘for most Polish klezmorim, their adventure with klezmer is, indeed, only about the music’ (p. 114), an assertion supported by some of the musicians themselves (p. 220), klezmer music is here unspokenly assumed to function primarily as a medium for performing something other than itself: memory, identity debates, and cultural stereotypes, rather than freygish scales, krekhtsn, and freylekhs. Music teachers are likewise more frequently portrayed as conveying cultural knowledge and legitimacy rather than musical technique and repertory.

Second, by eschewing detailed musical analysis or ethnographic exploration of klezmer music performances, Waligórska overlooks many of the dynamic, non-verbal ways in which artists, audience, and musical material interact in performance, and in which music serves as a distinct kind of space for the negotiation of identity, for artistic creativity, and for enabling the therapeutic and redemptive perceptions of klezmer described in chapter 5. The ‘creative and selective recombination of elements of the local musical heritage in...