American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots

1. American Klezmer: A Brief History

The term klezmer (or in Hebrew, kle zemer, “vessels of song”) has had many incarnations over the years, having been variously used to designate biblical-era Temple musicians, medieval minstrels, and eastern European virtuosi. It was in twentieth-century America, however, that klezmer underwent its most radical transformation, from a pejorative used to demean the talents and lifestyles of Jewish wedding musicians, to a catchall phrase for a rapidly evolving contemporary musical culture.1 The music now known as klezmer took root in the United States during the period of heaviest eastern European Jewish immigration, between 1880 and 1924, although there were traces of it in the Americas before that time. Klezmorim migrated from many parts of the AustroHungarian and Russian empires and from Romania and carried with them musical traditions which, while diverse, also share a great deal in common. Some klezmorim traveled extensively, and their resourcefulness in picking up repertoire led to the creation of an extensive tune network throughout the Jewish pale of settlement (for a more thorough look at the music’s European period, see chapter 6).2 The southern areas of the pale (Moldova, Bessarabia, the Bucovina region of Romania, and the southern Ukraine) were to klezmer almost as New Orleans was to American jazz. Gypsy, Greek, and Romanian elements eventually became so predominant in Jewish dance music traditions that some scholars dismissed klezmer as a separate genre altochapter 1 American Klezmer A Brief History hankus netsky 13 14 Hankus Netsky gether. If one listens closely, however, one can learn to distinguish the sound of a klezmer interpretation from other related performance styles. Yiddish-speaking Jews routinely use several uniquely descriptive words to identify the sounds found in the Jewish approach to music. The word krekhts (Yiddish for “groan”) refers to a wailing sound reminiscent of weeping, the term tshok might be used to refer to a laugh-like instrumental sound, and a kneytsh is a sob-like “catch.” These and other typical elements of klezmer music are also found in other forms of Jewish musical expression, including cantorial music and folksong. The cantorial parallel is especially evident in the shape and phrasing of Jewish instrumental improvisations. The Hasidic movement, which emerged in the latter half of the 1700s, had a profound impact on the klezmer tradition. This populist sect made religion more accessible to the masses by emphasizing dancing and the chanting of wordless melodies known in Yiddish (and Hebrew) as nigunim . Hasidim sang these melodies with an intense urgency, hoping to ascend to higher realms through their music.3 Klezmorim soon became indispensable at Hasidic gatherings, and the spirit of the movement greatly influenced their playing. Klezmorim brought all of their skills and repertoire with them and recreated the sounds of eastern Europe’s cities and towns on this side of the ocean. At first, virtually all of the klezmer orchestra leaders were violinists (many of whom doubled on trumpet to avoid combat during their tenure in the military). Some brought over typical European klezmer instruments such as the tsimbl (hammered dulcimer), straw fiddle (folk xylophone), harmonica (small accordion), bohemian flute, and rotary valve cornet. By the 1920s, Jewish dance music instrumentation had fallen more in line with typical American vaudeville or concert bands of the time. By then, a large proportion of the European Jewish ritual music repertoire had also been abandoned, along with much of the badkhones (wedding jester) tradition, which only lived on in certain Hasidic communities. Example 1.1 is a transcription of a section of “Lebedik Freylekh” (Lively, Merry), a Yiddish theater song recorded by the Abe Schwartz orchestra in New York in 1927. Schwartz, a Brooklyn-based Yiddish theater bandleader born in Romania, recorded many Jewish dance tunes and theater songs in a career that lasted from the 1910s well into the 1940s.4 In this arrangement, the melodic line is carried by the cornet, clarinet, and violin, while the rhythmic underpinning is provided by the traditional brass instruments (valve trombone and alto horn) and piano, American Klezmer 15 augmented by the more American sounds of slide-trombone, banjo, and drum set. The bass part is played by the left hand of the piano, a contrabass , and a bass saxophone. Similar arranging techniques were used by many other Jewish American bandleaders of the time, including I. J. Hochman, Abraham Elenkrieg , and Harry Kandel; early commercial recordings of these bands give us a sense of...