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Old-Time Music and the Klezmer Revival: a Personal Account

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Old-Time Music and the Klezmer Revival: a Personal Account Klezmer! Old-Time Music and the Klezmer Revival: APersonal Account Henry Sapoznik y the time I graduated from high school in culture, they were still puzzled about the 1971, I knew that I had a great affinity for proliferation of us in old-time music. traditional music- especially "old-time" After all, their own kin took nearly no B interest in it. music from Appalachia. Tommy asked me, "Hank, don't your Cutting loose from my Orthodox Jewish in the bite-size universe shared with people got none of your own music?" upbringing and liturgical studies under other urban revival old-time bands like Well, of course we had "our own" music: my cantor father, I put my Jewish music the New Lost City Ramblers and the blue­ cantorial melodies I sang with my father, in deep freeze and careened my way grass-oriented Greenbriar Boys, in which Hasidic tunes we sang in yeshiva, numer­ through rock and protest, winding up Ralph Rinzler played. ous songs sung with gusto during Pass­ with "authentic folk." Dubbing myself To this 19-year-old Brooklyn boy, North over. There was also the Israeli music I "Hank," I ventured forth with my $10 Carolina seemed like an amalgam of deeply loathed. But where were the great Japanese banjo intent on embodying the Shangri-La and Tobacco Road. My dream fiddlers, the driving elemental dance hard livin', hard travelin' repertoire of was to go as soon as possible. In the sum­ tunes, and exuberant, unself-conscious rural Americans. Haunting the numerous mer of 1973 I got a chance to make a genres of music? Above all, where were coffeehouses in Greenwich Village or field trip to Mt. Airy to the home of Tom­ the Jewish Tommys and Freds? I didn't heading to the Wailing Wall of folk music, my Jarrell and Fred Cockerham, two of know, but I meant to find out. And did. Washington Square Park, I would play a the most wonderful players of old-time host of antique American songs with other music. Septuagenarians both, the irascible Excerpted from Klezmer! A Social History children and grandchildren of East Tommy and the dryly self-deprecatory of Yiddish Music in America (Schirmer European Jewish emigres. The music Fred made perfect teachers. They were Press, forthcoming). scene was awash with fiddlers, banjo play­ generous, demonstrative, appreciative, ers, mandolin players, and guitarists who, accessible, and endlessly authentic. Over with their long stringy, beards and intense the next few years I made half a dozen Suggested Reading gazes, looked like nothing less than stu­ trips; these remain some of the most pow­ Sapoznik, Henry. 11 Kiezmer Music: The First Five Hundred dents playing hooky from beys medresh, erful and wonderful memories I have. Years.~~ In Musics of Multicultural America, ed. Kip the Jewish house of study. I fit right in. At breakfast one morning on one of Lorn ell and Anne Rassmusen. New York: Schirmer One band I sat in with was The Wretched these trips, Tommy offered me scrambled Press, 1998. Refuse String Band, whose name under­ eggs, bacon, and biscuits drenched in scored the relatively recent immigrant bacon-fat gravy. I opted for just coffee. Suggested Listening backgrounds of the musicians' families. The genial Tommy pressed me with Dave Tarras: Yiddish-American Klezmer Music 7925-1956. The following few years were filled with "Come on, Hank, eat up!" We parried Yazoo 7001. listening to 78 rpm recordings of bands and thrusted until Tommy, getting more Klezmer Plus! Featuring Sid Beckerman and Howie Leess. like Uncle Dave Macon and the Fruit Jar and more obstreperous, blurted out: Flying Fish 70488. Drinkers, Dr. Humphrey Bates and the "What's the matter with you, Hank? Possum Hunters, and my favorite, Charlie What're you, a damned Jew?" Whoa! I'm Henry Sapoznik is a leader in the Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers. still not sure if I was more startled by revitalization of traditional Yiddish music. In 1972, I formed my own old-time band, Tommy's language or his knowing that He is currently working on a history of The Delaware Water Gap String Band. pork is not kosher. In any case I stam­ music and a documentary for public The DWG soon became a popular group mered out: "Why, yes, Tommy, I am." It radio on the history of Yiddish radio. turned out that, touched and impressed as he and Fred were about the boundless enthusiasm Jews had for their music and 1998 SMITHSONIAN FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL 97 .
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