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5. “All My Life a Musician”: Ben Bazyler, a European Klezmer in America
- University of California Press
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The klezmer tradition suffered major discontinuity after World War II, owing to the near destruction of eastern European Jewry in the Holocaust and to the changes wrought by assimilation and acculturation on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as to the increasing importance of Israeli culture in shaping Jewish cultural identity worldwide. As a result, postwar musicians and scholars pursuing the study of klezmer music have mainly been compelled to turn to commercial recordings of the music—in large part, 78 rpm records made during the first four decades of this century—as a primary aural source, rather than to contemporary practitioners. This dearth of opportunities for personal contact and study with master musicians performing a vital, functional repertoire within a broad-based community context has widened the distance between the present musical generation and those who have preceded them, to an extent virtually unparalleled in other Euro-American musical traditions. In some cases, however, students of the genre in North America, Israel , and eastern Europe have been fortunate to make the acquaintance of both immigrant and native-born exponents of the tradition in various stages of its contemporary development. The repertoire, techniques, lore, and style imparted by clarinetists Dave Tarras (1897–1989), Sid Beckerman, Rudy Tepel, Ray Musiker, and Max Epstein; violinists Leon Schwartz (1901–90), Moyshe Nussbaum (1898–1987), and Aaron Shifrin ; saxophonist Howie Leese; trumpeter Ken Gross; pianist/accordion73 chapter 5 “All My Life a Musician” Ben Bazyler, a European Klezmer in America michael alpert ists Sam Beckerman, Pete Sokolow, Leonid Verbitsky, and Isaac Sadigursky ; drummers Joe Helfenbein, Louis Grupp, Irving Graetz, and Ben Bazyler (1922–90); and numerous others have helped breathe life into the performance and study of a rich musical tradition from which the present generation was all but cut off. As a researcher of traditional eastern European Jewish music and dance as well as a professional musician active in the klezmer revitalization , I conducted in-depth interviews with Ben Bazyler between 1984 and 1990, exploring many aspects of his life and work. Our conversations were primarily conducted in Yiddish, with portions in Polish, Russian, and occasionally English, representing the languages in which Bazyler felt comfortable and reflecting the diverse linguistic legacy of his experience. As he succinctly put it, in English, “I speak with an accent, right? Before I came to this country, I didn’t have an accent.” Bazyler engaged in a great deal of “internal” code switching in conversation, using Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and English, alternately and in combination, even within a single phrase. His subject, as well as the language connected with a given experience, in large part seemed to determine this. While Yiddish was an important vehicle of expression for him, he often turned to Polish in discussing history or to Russian to discuss professional issues like theatricality and stage presentation. While he tended to talk about the personal introspection he undertook in Los Angeles in English, he continued to use Yiddish or Polish to underscore his points and supply proverbial support. His own summation of his behavior illuminated this: “I used to act ‘Russian style,’ get angry, throw dishes . . .”; later he became more “American . . . contemporary.” The relationship between Bazyler and me was multifaceted and hardly confined by the parameters of traditional ethnography. In addition to time spent in the interview context, he and I performed numerous times together in concert (with other colleagues), traveling at times hundreds of miles, recorded together, taught at festivals and retreats, attended movies and the theater, visited his family, put each other up for days at a time in our respective homes in Los Angeles and New York, spent long hours together on the telephone, and were planning a trip to Poland and the Soviet Union at the time of his death. Even the exchange of information during the interviews themselves, formalized to some extent by the presence of the tape recorder and the attempt to focus on particular topics, was not a one-way street. To a large extent, Bazyler and I “traded material.” He shared with me his vast knowledge of the eastern European Jewish milieu, musical and otherwise, as well as his accumulated 74 Michael Alpert [18.205.67.119] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:12 GMT) wisdom, and I offered him not only an appreciation of his expertise and new professional/artistic opportunities, but also songs, tunes, and ideas that enhanced his repertoire and sparked his imagination—just as his songs, tunes, and ideas did...