Klarinet Archive - Posting 000106.txt from 2004/09

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Klezmer info
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2004 11:08:06 -0400

Fred Jacobowitz wrote,
>Klezmer is a specific style, not a catch-all phrase
>denoting Jewish Music. Think of it like this: If
>you speak pidgeon-english with a heavy foreign
>accent and use non-english syntax (like Yoda),
>you are not a real English speaker any more than
>a person playing Klezmer music without the right
>style is a Klezmer Musician. You might be
>understood by English speakers but you
>wouldn't be respected as a English-speaker.

I understand the distinction between authentic and non-authentic Klezmer
music, but the comparison with native and non-native speakers of a language
brings up a tangential subject. Yoda's English is idiosyncratic and
accented, yes, and it may not be *good* English by schoolbook standards
(although I've never seen a schoolbook from Yoda's planet...), but is it
not *real* English? What's real English? (What's real klezmer music?
What's real music?)

Anglo-Saxon was a kludged-together language with roots in Old Norse and Old
High German. Then came William the Conqueror, and by Shakespeare's time,
about half of the English language derived directly from Norman French.
Unlike the French, we speakers of English can't afford to be purists,
because we've mixed up a regular word salad in the centuries since
Shakespeare. We've assimilated native speakers of hundreds of languages and
adopted vocabulary from all over the world. None of those words seem more
"real" to me than others, even though some of them are younger members of
the language. (Did "real" klezmer music become fixed in some absolute form
in a particular place and at a particular time? Isn't it still growing?
Can't it change without losing its identity?)

I'm a former English teacher and current volunteer tutor in English as a
second language. It's true that almost any native speaker of English can
tell when someone comes from a part of the world where the native English
is not one's own native English. Someone whose native language is Brooklyn
English generally knows when someone else is not from Brooklyn. We can
also detect a foreign accent from anyone who began learning English any
later than early childhood. I've met very few people who learned English
as teens or adults who could speak completely idiomatic, unaccented
American English. Often, a native speaker of any language can even
recognize a foreign accent and can guess what the person's native language
might be. (Similarly, we can tell the difference between a professional
opera singer and a crossover rock star singing the same aria.)

That brings up the most loaded word in the quotation above: *respect*. I'm
guessing that you didn't mean this word in quite the way that I think some
people might read it. I hope it doesn't mislead anyone to assume that
people here will be contemptuous if it's obvious that a Klarinet list
member learned English as a second (or fifth!) language. Genuine
disrespect for foreigners is rare on this list (though not so rare in
everyday life). I respect anybody who has mastered this difficult language
to the point of speaking it or writing it well enough to be understood,
even when I want to help them speak it better. That's a touchy subject
with me, because some of my ESL students become timid about using their
English after they encounter the occasional bus driver, store cashier,
etc., who snaps, "Speak English!" or something even more rude, instead of
making an honest, respectful effort to understand and help.

A person can grow up with no native language. Some people used to whisper
that one of my uncles by marriage spoke his excellent though rather bookish
English with a "phony-sounding" accent. What he really had was a polyglot
accent. He'd been uprooted so often that he'd never fit in anywhere in his
life. An Afrikaaner man and an English woman adopted him in South Africa,
from an orphanage run by German nuns. His adoptive parents then moved to
Korea, then to China and finally to Argentina--all the time with a French
tutor!--and when he reached his teens, they sent him to the USA to study
the organ. In early adulthood, he moved back to Argentina, where he met
and married my aunt, who talked him into moving to the USA. He spoke with
an undefinable accent in all seven languages. I suppose the equivalent
might be one of those musicians who loves many kinds of music, refuses to
specialize, crosses genres and then gets labelled as a sellout, or not a
"real" jazz player, but not a "real" classical musician, either, nor a
"real" klezmer player, nor a "real" rocker, etc.. That person might still
be a *real* musician.

Although it's possible to label certain types of music as non-authentic (or
hybrid or even fake) klezmer, I think it's also possible to recognize that
music can be *good music* whether it altogether fits into a category or
not. (Also, just because music is authentic doesn't mean it's good.) I'm
uncomfortable with the whole idea that in order to earn respect, a musician
must specialize, and then stick with that specialty in order to be accepted
as "real," or that a person must be a native to belong. Music thrives
between open borders.

Lelia Loban
America can do better: Kerry and Edwards in 2004!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org