Klarinet Archive - Posting 000866.txt from 2003/08

From: "david lowther" <dlowther@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Gezunt or Gezint
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 11:16:04 -0400

This is NOT Mary, this is her husband David, who is descended from
Lithuanian Hassidim on his mother's side.

I was not brought up in the shul, as my father was Anglican atheist and my
mother was Hebrew agnostic. Both agreed that the children should be
spiritually uncontaminated, so klezmer came to me late in life, through a
nonjew who loved the music, and I feel that I can respond as a semigoy to
the notion that Klezmer is in the blood.

While I am crazy about it, and have all but abandoned other forms of music
to play freilachs and bulgars, I do not feel that I play better than or more
appropriately than some of the nonjews I jam with. Their spirits respond to
the music of the lost as much as mine does.

What I worry about is that such an attitude will contribute to the
restriction of our music to an elite, rather than opening it to the entire
world. It is to analogous to saying only a German can understand Beethoven,
or an Austrian Strauss. As I said before, a gentile introduced me to
klezmer by playing it beautifully.

Let me share a secret with you: when I play klezmer i always think to
myself, "Hey, Adolf! We live, and you don't." It was not just our persons
that were murdered; it was our culture as well. The more persons of
whatever ancestry play the music, the more we live again.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is supported by Woodwind.Org, http://www.woodwind.org/