Author: byishimo

Monday 18^th August

Klezmer Festival Ignites a Fire

The year 2009 saw the successful staging of the 22nd annual Klezmer Festival in Tzfat.

Beginning in 1987, it was clear that the Klezmer Festival was an extraordinary opportunity for Jews of all backgrounds to gather in an open and festive atmosphere to listen to Jewish music and experience the magic of Tzfat.

The festival draws some of the world’s top musicians, and from those early days, it also quickly became evident that serious students of music were drawn to the festival to hear the great artists and learn from them. Throughout the years, various venues wer

In 2004, a model of Master Clarinet Classes began which has been repeated yearly until the present. During the week following the Klezmer Festival, the master musicians, led by Giora Feidman, conduct classes for master clarinet students throughout the day, and the evenings are devoted to their presentations, which are open to the public.

Klezmer Festival’s Beginnings

Throughout the ’50s and ’60, and even into the ’70s and ’80s, Tzfat was known among Israelis more for its secular nightlife and bohemian Artist’s Colony than it was as a religious center.

Israelis came to Tzfat from Tel Aviv to walk among the galleries and enjoy the clubs and decidedly non-religious at

mosphere. Many of Israel’s greatest artists either lived in Tzfat or maintained summer galleries in the town, and the people that they attracted were not interested in synagogue tours or Kabbalah study.

By the late ’70s, many of these artists were quite elderly, and no longer coming to Tzfat to open their galleries. At the same time, more and more religious families were settling in Tzfat, and the city was slowly turning to a more traditional way.

In 1987, Tzfat’s then-mayor, Zev Pearl, had a thought. He wanted to put Tzfat on the cultural map of Israel. He wanted to attract all Israelis to come to Tzfat. And he did not want to offend the growing religious population. So he came up with the idea of hosting a yearly “Klezmer Music Festival“. The music would be traditional Jewish Klezmer music, comfortable for the religious public, but “hip” enough to attract secular Israelis.

Thus was born the Tzfat Klezmer Festival which, in 2009, will be celebrating its 22nd anniversary.

Festival Set-Up

The 3-night festival is set up on open-air stages throughout the city, and entrance is free to almost all the stages (there are generally one or two stages with paid performances). Anyone who is in the city when the roads are closed may wander freely….for people coming in after 4:00p.m., when the police close the roads, parking lots are set up outside the town and buses ferry people back and forth for a small fee, since Tzfat itself doesn’t have the parking capabilities to accommodate so many people).

The stages are centered in the Artists Quarter and Old City, and schedules announce to the people attending the festival which artists are appearing when and where. Everyone has their favorites, and visitors plan their programs, insuring that they will be at the festival on the evening that their favorites are performing. Meryl Reznik, Musa Berlin and Hanan Bar Sela are three of the most sought-after performers, but the stages feature Klezmer bands from Budapest, Vilna and Germany, along with Israeli artists like Adi Ran, Boris Maglinik and Yisrael Zohar.

Fans of Oaf Simchas and Aaron Raizel and other not purely Klezmer bands can attend performances by these artists, and, of course, Tzfat natives like Simply Tzfat, Dov and Ita Silberman, Dani Hadad and Meir Glazer of the Beirav Carlebach Minyan are well represented. In fact, one stage, at Gan HaIr, is set up as a center for “Carlebach Non-Stop” stage, although Carlebach music is not Klezmer, it is one of the most popular stages.

The 2009 Klezmer Festival is scheduled for August 10th, 11th and 12th.

As early as the 16th century, theatre was embraced by the Jews in the form of playlets put on during

the Jewish holiday of Purim, known as Purim Spiels. The original spiels served the purpose of telling the story of Queen Esther, the female heroine of the Purim story. It wasn’t until the 19th century, however, that the Yiddish theatre was born. A journalist by the name of Golfarben gets t

A virtuoso fiddler who plays a wide variety of styles, Ruby Harris has performed at sold-out concerts at The Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center in New York City, Carnegie Hall, and Avery Fisher Hall. Harris has performed before former President Clinton, prime ministers and mayors. The talented musician has appeared before the Democratic National Convention, MTV and

 CBS Records. One of the first on the scene of the Klezmer renaissance, Harris has played with the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Andy Statman, The Klezmatics, Jazmer, The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, and Soulfarm. Here, Harris speaks about some of the influences on his music.

Q: How has cantorial music affected your playing—do you draw on any particular cantorial music or the cantors thems

elves for inspiration?

A: Just last week I played a concert in Chicago with the Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute [Choir conducted by] Cantor He

rshtik and company. We both inspired each other very much. I’m a fan of the great cantors and any cantor that can move us spiritually.

Uplifting Combination

Q: Does Klezmer music have magical powers—can this music cause souls to awaken?

A: I’ve seen it constantly, on all levels, from babies to the elderly. Music talks where words lose their meaning, music talks and communicates to the Neshama, or soul. People who play music have the power to bring people very high, or, unfortunately, the other way, too. Klezmer music with Torah values is a marvelous uplifting combination.

Q: Performing music with rigor is a great workout. How would you rate the workout you get from playing Klezmer fiddle as compared to playing Bluegrass, Appalachian, or Cajun fiddle, for instance?

A: I, who play all those constantly, see no difference in any of them. Once we’re jammin’, we’re workin’ out and breakin’ it down, as they say. Recently, on [the Jewish holiday of] Purim, we had ’em dancing for 4 hours straight going wild. Weddings can be the same.

Very Present

Q: Music soothes the savage beast and when musicians play for themselves, they choose particular songs or genres according to their mood and whim. When you play just for yourself, what mood would you be in if you chose to play in Klezmer style and how do you feel when you put your fiddle down?

A: Klezmer for me is music for a good mood. I somehow am more inspired to play the up-tempo klezmer fiddle tunes, and the slower ones are beautiful and very present too. Putting my fiddle down is usually necessary to pick up my guitar, mandolin, or plate of fried chicken.

Ruby Harris is one of the original performers of The Diaspora Yeshiva Band, and has played his fiddle

Modern Klezmer

Q: When did you begin to perform klezmer music?

A: When I joined Diaspora Yeshiva Band in approximately 1976, there were only 2 bands playing the newly named genre called “Klezmer”: the Klezmorim and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. David Grey of the former called me to interview me about the new style of old music and I performed with members of the latter, Hankus Netsky and Don Byron in New York. Others were, like us, practically inventing modern Klezmer, and re-discovering the beautiful music of our childhood and ancestors.

Q: How do you see the role of the violin in today’s klezmer repertoire?

A: Of course I see it as major bordering on essential. Klezmer means 2 things: fiddle and clarinet. Everything else is just spice. Of course you sometimes need a whole band of all the instruments.

Q: How do you explain the popular resurgence of Klezmer music in our time?

The earliest written records about klezmorim (klezmer musicians) and their guilds are from the Middle Ages

and date back to 1558 in Prague, and 1654 in Lublin. While women musicians are mentioned in these early documents, they seem to disappear from the klezmer scene, reappearing only in the later years of the 20th century. Before this time, music on the Jewish scene was scarce, owing to the prohibition of listening to instrumental music as a mourning custom relating to the destruction of the Second Temple. By the Middle Ages, however, enough time had elapsed so that, at least in practice, the prohibition was relaxed.

Family Affair

Various rabbinic rulings were issued regarding the number of musicians permitted to perform at specific functions, such as weddings. The music profession, like so many other occupations, ran in families. The musicians were not just popular among their own people—Christian nobility and well-to-do merchants sought the services of the klezmorim, as well. Music guilds were formed to set fees, vote on and license members, and to provide benefits.

In one instance, the Master of Ceremonies for a wedding (badchan) complained that he deserved the monopoly on s

uch services in this city. The badchan’s duties were all-encompassing including such wedding services as improvising songs and poems relating to the new couple, their guests, and their presents; performing on the violin; acting as a bandleader; joke telling; serving up impersonations; and in general, entertaining the wedding party during the course of one full week.

Exclusive Rights

In this case, a bandleader tried to compete and get work as a badchan. The town council agreed that the badchan should have the exclusive rights to all work of this nature, but the bandleader obtained permission to work as a badchan four years later, beca

use his act was popular.

A kind of argot sprang up among the klezmorim which borrowed a great deal from the slang of the underworld. This type klezmer-speak was known as “klezmer loshen” or klezmer tongue.

In 1805, the Pale of Settlement was established in Czarist Russia as the only areas in which Ashkenazi Jews were permitted to live. 95 years later, some 5.5 million Jews had settled in the Pale. The Pale was comprised of rural towns and the Jews called the smallest towns “shtetl” (singular) and “shtetlach” (plural form). Klezmorim might be based in a certain shtetl, but tended to move about quite a bit to perform at special occasions as well as concerts for local nobility.

Combined Forces

Other than the klezmorim, the only other professional musicians in the Pale were the Romany (gypsies) and as a result, the two often combined forces. The influence of either group’s music can be felt on the others’. Thanks to this trading of musical influences, many of the klezmer tunes of Hungary survived into the 20th century, though the Jews of Hungary, including the klezmorim,

had perished.

By the 19th century, klezmer instruments included the violin, tsimbl (hammered dulcimer), flute, cello or bass, and plectrum instruments such as small drums or mandolin. The violin came to overtake the tsimbl as the lead instrument and a style was developed in which the violin would mimic human speech.

After this time, brass and big sound percussion instruments were introduced and clarinet started to edge out the violin because of its resemblance to the human voice and its clarity on records. Some of these modern klezmer innovations were due to Jews having played in army bands. When these Jewish soldiers were demobilized, they often brought home these instruments and their newfound musical skills.

The genre of music known as klezmer, received its name only in the 1970’s when this Jewish soul music enjoyed

renewed popularity. The term klezmer was coined from two Hebrew words: “kley” meaning vessel or tool, and, “zemer” meaning tune or song. In Hebrew, the term “kley zemer” refers to musical instruments, but during the mid 17th century, a musician began to be referred to as a klezmer, and the plural form became “klezmorim.” Only during the resurgence in popularity of this music in the 20th century did the term come to connote a certain musical style.

Celebratory Music

Klezmer is the sound of the celebratory music the Eastern European, Yiddish-speaking Jews played at their special occasions, such as weddings. An overview of Jewish history and in particular, Eastern European Jewish history is therefore essentia

Levite Tribe

As far back as biblical times, music was interwoven into Jewish religious practices. The Levite tribe was responsible for providing music during services held at the Temple. It was believed that music had the magical power to heal the soul and psyche, elevate the spirit, and create miracles. The bible makes mention of several types of musical instruments and the psalms contains certain musical notations, though the texts fall short of giving us an idea of the sound of the music which was played in the Temple.