Talk:Klezmer

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Klezmer has become to mean more the contemporary renditions of old Hebrew/Jewish/Yiddish music, such as the music by that of Hasidic New Wave. I don't believe this should be merged.

I removed the following sentence. It struck me as a subjective judgement, not a statement of fact:

"Unlike rock, or African-influenced music, klezmer is made for dancing while holding hands, or dancing with a partner."

One might also argue that the idea of dancing "with a partner" is not quite what Ashkenazi dances were about. Hmoulding 15:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

):P

כלי does not have to mean "vessel ". In this context, "instrument" would be a better translation. So - "instrument of song", or, even better, "musical instrument".

"...especially wedding repertoire, since Jewish weddings would last several days..." It links to a Jewish wedding article, which does not exist and which I doubt will ever exist. Maybe it should link to wedding, even though at the time wedding does not have anything on Jewish weddings in particular. --Mr. Jenkins 02:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I removed Rzeszow Klezmer Band - official website of Polish Klezmer Group from the list of external links because it's spam. The band isn't even widely known in Poland and has little to do with original klezmer tradition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.156.18.190 (talk) 11:55, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone over it and made some edits to some things that I feel were giving the wrong impression in this article. Plenty more things could be changed by someone trying to write a quality article, I guess, and for something like this where very little is known about historical times, a lot of it comes down to what someone happens to have read on the subject..

- I changed "Bulgarian music" to "Ukrainian music" since the latter had a lot more in common with klezmer as we know it (in terms of instrumentation and modes). I don't see how Bulgarian music has had any influence at all on klezmer aside from the word "Bulgar"?

-"Kleyzmurim" spelling: I'm not sure who put this, and it sounds right according to a certain way of pronouncing it, but I've only ever read it spelled "Klezmorim". This should at least be included as the first example since I've seen it in tons of books and scholarly articles and never any other way of spelling it.

-I added a sentence at the end of the first section saying that very little is known about the history of klezmer. I wasn't sure how to phrase this, but I think it's very important. An "overconfidant" article claiming everything as self-evident fact could give the wrong idea.

-I deleted the "cakewalk" from the list of dances. I'm not trying to be against American influences or whatever, but has this every been included in any serious list of traditional dances except as a novelty? Certainly, out of dozens of classic and revival cds, I can't name any cakewalk klezmer melody.

-I added in some bands performing klezmer using "traditional" instrumentation, since there are plenty of them today.

-I changed the word "original form" to "historic form". What would the original form be, in a tradition that is constantly changing due to new influences? I also deleted the last sentence about klezmorim being mocked for their tempos. Dan Carkner (talk) 22:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- I changed the introductory paragraph about modes to reflect the co-territorial influence more than the synagogue one. I think the cantorial modes were/are important for describing the different modes in klezmer, but many of them were originally picked up from eastern europe, not the middle east, and I think it's important to reflect this more honestly.

-I wrote in more detail in the repertoire section about the melodies themselves, not just how the repertoire was transmitted, which is all that was addressed previously. Also, I'm uncomfortable with the statement that all "20th century" (presumably revival, not pre-WWII??) was learned from fakebooks. this may be true in the current klezmer "scene", but there are still people who learn the music by ear, whether in eastern europe, israel, or in revival groups in north america or western europe. Dan Carkner (talk) 23:19, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article as a whole is very weak on citations. Of course, a great deal of Bixing could be perpetrated with citations anyway, but certain published sources such as Slobin and Strom are fairly reliable, and at least statements within them can be traced back to an informed source. There's a fair amount of "what I thought I heard at Klez Kamp" or Balkan camp or on the world music mailing list "knowledge in here".

Dan has made some good points - especially about "learned from fakebooks". Even within the "revival" scene, a great deal of ear learning goes on. Many of the "Kamp" teachers insist on it.

However, there are Jewish Cakewalks - see Strom.

Dan's addition that "little is known" I think is arguable. There's a lot that's known, but it isn't necessarily what passes for knowledge in the romanticized oral histories ("bixing"); and a lot of this article is of that nature. Certainly what's known has its spottiness and is colored by strong opinion on the religious/secular question.

I would particularly challenge the idea that the sound owes more to co-territoriality than to the synagogue. My unsupported statement: it is usually easy to tell if a modern player has spent time in a traditional shul, because you will hear it in the music. The origins of the debate have a lot to do with the origins of the "revival", which for many people created an alternative to synagogue Judaism at a time when lesbians and gay men could not be out in almost any synagogue - a situation which has moderated but is still very real - and a time when the role distinctions made in synagogues left many women feeling disenfranchised - at a time when roles in the greater society were opening up.

I suggest that this is the reason for the frequent discounting of the role of the the liturgical music and the Shabbos table songs etc on klezmer and on Yiddish theater. However, any reasonable study of other folk musics in Western Ukraine (the outside influence I'm most familiar with) shows something in common but a great deal of difference - the modes are different and there is, very oddly, no known tunes in common. There are fragments, but even something like a kolomyika, where the basic form is identical reveals two entirely different results, in melody, harmony, and (apart from the time signature), the rhythm. You can't dance a Ukrainain kolomyika to a Jewish kolomyika.

That's my comments on Dan's additions - which I think on the whole are an improvement, aside from the co-territorial question.

The section on steygers is particularly troubling on many levels. One is the lack of attribution. Two is the apparent lifting of content from another site, but with some changes to words. It relies too much on comparison to other modes and scales - which the reader may not know - without offering a simple definition of the mode.

The statement that "most klezmer is in D Freygish" is bizarre. I'll grant the "D" - not as historical fact but as a modern reality in Kamp situaions - but almost everything is in Freygish?

Also the statement that most Hasidic music is in freygish is untrue - my original research shows most Hasidic music is in major.

The statement that Magen Avos is the mode of "Friday night prayers" is wrong. Magen Avos *is* the mode for a specific section of the Friday night ma'ariv - the "Magen Avos" prayer. The mode change is part of how the move from profane time to sacred time is made on Shabbos.

Tsimbler (talk) 02:04, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments, I agree with pretty much everything you have written. I don't exactly know what to say about the "co-territorial" thing. I don't really disagree with what you have said. I just think it is almost always brought too far in the opposite direction from what I wrote-- like Yale Strom repeatedly writing that klezmer modes can be traced basically to ancient Israel?? which I don't believe. But you're right in terms of tone/feeling/etc, it has a lot to do with the vocal side of Judaism. Dan Carkner (talk) 03:15, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The "little is known" line seems very odd. I'm doing a paper on Klezmer now, and I have in my possesion: 1. Over a dozen large-scale, academically-oriented, peer-reviewed books in its history 2. Seven lengthy dissertations, all from major institutions 3. Dozens of articles from peer-reviewed journals I'm removing that line for now (if I can), as the evidence to the contrary is in large stacks all around me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.151.107.141 (talk) 05:58, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I still stand by my original edit.

""Suppose you were a researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Your starting point would be hundreds of thousands of recorded and notated examples of peasant folk songs. In fireproof closets you would have securely stowed the almost sacred tune transcriptions, dating back to the dawn of the twentieth century, penned by the legendary composer-analysts Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly. Or suppose you were in Bucharest, where I once (1974) met a team of returning ethnomusicologists who were following up the "Bartok singers" yet again, to track the evolution of the folk aesthetic over three generations. "Oh," one said pointing to a newly transcribed melody, "Maria ends that line differently." We have no such resources for klezmer. Long ago, tyrants and madmen destroyed or silenced the vast majority of the players. Across the huge expanse of the old klezmer territory, no one--save one herioc scholar in Kiev, Moshe Beregovski--organized extensive fieldwork or complied a substatial archive of the tunes. In the United States--not surprisingly, given the ideology of assimilation--no counterpart to Beregovski emergeed beyond the record producers of the commercial companies, who left us a legacy of 78 RPM recordings ignored by the academic world for decades. Only in the last few years has anyone thought to question retired musicians about the dried-up manuscripts in their attics. Until 1994 no one published a single series, well-researched article in English on the nature and evolution of the core klezmer repertoire, so Walter Zev Feldman's essay stands like a solitary oak in a field of scholarly silence."

-Mark Slobin, p.93, "Fiddler on the Move"

It may seem like there is a fair amount of information, but compared to almost any other folk genre, there is almost nothing, and what there is is quite recent and based on not very much information.Dan Carkner (talk) 17:04, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Should we have articles for individual songs? Oyfen Pripatchek, Bamir bist du shane...? Joe407 (talk) 06:17, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You mean Oyfn Pripetchek, Bei Mir Bistu Shein, no? Bar-abban (talk) 19:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that the entire section on modes is lifted from this article by Josh Horowitz: [1] some of it was rephrased here or there, but pretty much every statement comes from that article. That's why I put a copyright tag on the section. I'll try working on it when I have some time..Dan Carkner (talk) 20:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the article one can read that "The Roma influence is, perhaps, the strongest and most enduring of the musical styles that influenced traditional klezmer musicians. Klezmer musicians heard and adapted traditional Roma music, which is reflected in the dance forms found throughout surviving klezmer music repertoire (e.g., Horas, Doinas, Sirbas, and Bulgars etc.)". I edited "Roma" to "Romanian" but it seems that somebody does not agree with that and had reversed back to Roma. I wonder what is his/her argument. My point is that a) Romanian folklore (especially from the north-east) is very similar with Klezmer, b) Hora, Doina, Sirba are Romanian genres of music and c) if somebody follows the links to Hora, Doina or Sirba, he will find that these are related to Romanian music; hence this is another source of confusion between Romanians and Roma people. So, dear editor, could you please be so kind to provide some reference supporting the idea that Roma influence on klezmer is stronger than Romanian influence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.115.16.203 (talk) 22:48, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let me start by saying that I know nothing about this subject. I only know there may currently be an invalid statement in the article. The article states: "Many believe Gershwin was influenced by the Yiddish of his youth, and that the opening of "Rhapsody in Blue" was a nod to klezmer clarinetting."
I was looking at an IP editor's edits and noticed this removal of the word "mistakenly" of the aforementioned sentence. The IP editor has made just two edits; the other edit is strange. I decided to look into the history of this article, because maybe "mistakenly" needs to be put back in.
The current ref was added here. The IP editor removed the word "mistakenly" before the ref was added. This seems to indicate the IP editor was right about removing the word "mistakenly". However, going further back, before someone added citation needed, a citation was removed that was added here when the text was put into the article. The original citation is also from a book and even though it's not possible to read the book via Google Books, it is possible to look up the citation and it's actually in the book.
So now the question is, which book is right? I didn't read the actual citations, but I decided to add this post on the Talk page to let you know that there may currently be an invalid statement in the article. --82.170.113.123 (talk) 19:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't he be mentioned?211.225.33.104 (talk) 23:07, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]