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What
is a Klezmer?
Mark Slobin, the American Jewish ethnomusicologist, points out
that klezmer music was never considered an identity symbol for Jews previous to
its "revival" in the 1970s.
In traditional Yiddish society a musician
is a sort of necessary evil – you have to have them to fulfill the
commandment to make the bride happy at a wedding, but you would rather your
daughter did not marry one.
The word "klezmer" refers to a
yikhes, a social rank, and a rather low at that. Klezmer
were families – dynasties – of hereditary musicians. In Iasi, in
fact, the klezmer families had their own synagogue. The word
klezmer, in reference to a musician, is rarely used by older Romanian
Jews – they prefer musikant or shpiler.
Most of
the older generation of Jewish musicians bristled at the word klezmer
– Dave Tarras said that the word referred to somebody who could only play
Jewish music, while he was a Jewish musician. |