Sonneck Society for American Music
Bulletin, Volume XXIV, no. 2 (Spring 1998)
Can Blacks Play Klezmer? Authenticity in American Ethnic Musical Expression
David Borgo, U.C.L.A.
What makes a musical performance authentic in a given style or tradition? Are lived experience
and musical and cultural immersion sufficient inroads to musical authenticity? While a
musical style may have definite origins in a particular ethnic community, can that community
claim sole propriety of that music? If we do allow for the acquisition of ethnic
musical competence by individuals outside of the given ethnic community, by what means can
we authenticate their musical expression? What differentiates the process of musical
"authentication" by an out-group musician, the ligitimate musical tribute that makes
genres vibrant and dynamic, from the more reprehensible act of musical appropriation
and exploitation? Can a black musician have a Jewish soul?
Don Byron is a black clarinetist, born and raised in the Bronx. He father played bass in a
calypso band, his mother was a pianist, and as a child he was taken regularly to jazz clubs and to the
Philharmonic. During his still young career, Byron has studied and performed classical music,
ragtime, jazz, salsa, and klezmer, the Jewish secular instrumental music of Eastern
Europe and the Jewish American immigrant community. While still an undergraduate
at the New England Conservatory, Byron began playing in the Klezmer Conservatory Band.
It hooked him: "I immediately responded to the mischief in the music, where the clarinet would play
the most out thing he could think of . . . as time went by, I developed my own voice in that
language."1 He eventually formed his own band and recorded an album of the music of Mickey
Katz, a popular Yiddish parodist of the 1950s.
Don Byron is not shy about producing socially and politically conscientious music. He has composed
and recorded songs commenting on many current events including the Rodney King
beatings. According to Byron, "Even the Mickey Katz music has a certain kind of politics
to it; The Mickey Katz album is a pro-ethnicity record."2 On the album, Byron
features newly arranged Katz parodies of music ranging from Khachaturian compositions, Latin
music styles, and big band hits to other traditional Americana. Byron, as a jazz
clarinetist, stirs in his own musical borrowings from Thelonious Monk and John
Coltrane. So why is this a "pro-ethnicity" record?
The term klezmer (pl. klezmorim) is derived from a compound Hebrew word meaning
"vessel of song." Previously referring only to the musicians and their instruments, the term
is now often used to describe a distinct musical genre. Klezmorim are professional
instrumentalists who traditionally entertain at weddings, Bar mitzvahs, circumcision feasts,
and other social events for both Jewish and gentile audiences. Dating as far back as the
sixteenth century, klezmorim were highly skilled performers of diverse and eclectic folk
genres. In addition to their Jewish repertoire, klezmorim played other regional music and
dance styles ranging from polkas, mazurkas, quadrilles, and Viennese waltzes to classical
overtures.3
Klezmer music was transplanted to the United States with the influx of Ashkenazic Jews from
Germany beginning in the 1840s and continuing through the post-Holocaust years. The musical
eclecticism and flexibility of European klezmorim proved to be an important factor in their integration into
American musical life. While European-born klezmorim transplanted to America often
had limited contact with American popular musics, the second generation klezmorim,
Jewish musicians born in the United States, began to internalize the nuances of American
music, language, and culture. The 1920s and 30s marked a period of attempted reconciliation
in the immigrant community between Jewish and American social and musical values. An early example of this
Jewish American musical fusion is the song "And the Angels Sing," made famous by the Benny
Goodman orchestra. Essentially a traditional freilach, trumpeter Ziggy Elman
transformed the song into a Swing Era hit. Clarinetist Dave Tarras and saxophonist
Sam Musiker also recorded several innovated fusions during this period, but the
subsequent decline of the big bands after World War II and the changing musical
tastes of the Jewish American community stifled additional growth in this area until the
1970s.
The post war years were an extremely heterogenous time in American popular music. The
transition from swing to rock-and-roll saw a decade of pop hits from literally all over the
map. In the 1950s, top sellers were "Vaya con Dios," "Oh Mein Papa," "Tennessee Waltz," "Volare,"
"Day-O," and "Que Sera Sera" to name only a few. Byron points out in his liner notes to the
Mickey Katz album that although this period might seem a time of "cheerful and
harmonious pluralism," European Americans were seemingly in a rush to erase any
and all distinctive ethnic markers in a drive towards assimilation. These were the
quintessential melting pot years in American history and also the height of anti-Semitism.
According to Byron:
These tunes were like vaccines, weakened versions of Americans' pre-Ellis Island
identities injected into mass culture to build up resistance. After the first flush of
pleasure at seeing one's ethnic heritage represented, most people found the
trivialization (and overexposure) repugnant. It was as if the goal of these
psuedo-ethnic tunes was to make us all immune to whatever was not white and
"American."4
Given this general trend towards assimilation, it is remarkable that Mickey Katz
chose to incorporate Yiddish lyrics into his musical parodies at a time when the
language was seen both as a reminder of the Holocaust and a barrier to advancement in
American society. Katz was a popular vocalist, virtuoso clarinetist, and staged
and starred in several English-Yiddish variety shows. His songs reflected contemporary
Jewish American life with few sentimental references to a romanticized old country.
Byron writes that Katz "dived headlong into the chasm between America's immigrant
population and a social order that held -- and stil holds -- WASP-iness as its highest
value . . . . His songs portrayed people who were in touch with both ethnic traditions and
the consistently changing array of people, cultures, and information that was, and is,
America."5 The "pro-ethnicity" message of Bryon's recent interpretations
of Katz's music also seems to emphasize these plural and dynamic aspects of ethnic
identification.
Since the 1970s, there has been a pronounced resurgence of interest in klezmer music, and several
well-known ensembles have been successful in transporting klezmer music from the
home and wedding hall to the theater and concert stage.6 Critics of this
klezmer revival often regard these groups as self-concious, institutionalized, and
re-interpretive. However, ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin argues that they
provide a good example of the tension between the openness of Jewish audiences
to other ethnic influences -- in this case jazz, blues, and classical music -- and the
strong communal consensus among Ashkenazics in America best exemplified by the
ubiquitous synagogue and welfare institutions.7
This dialectic between the socially nurtured and cherished aspects of ethnicity, and its dynamic
and polysemic nature, continually informs current discussions. Nathan Glazer and Daniel
Moynihan, leading voices in the debate, have focused on the importance of ethnic
identification in furthering a sense of solidarity among group members and mobilizing
social, political, and economic concerns.8 Although historical
injustices and current social and economic inequities help to explain this sense of
ethnic solidarity, the dynamic aspects of ethnic identification may allow room for a
less protectionist stance towards ethnic traditions and permit the proper
initiation of outsiders into ethnic expressive autheticity.
Scholars of European classical music often evaluate musical authenticity by comparing
a given performance with the notated composition and the agreed-upon model for its
interpretation. Within ethnic musical traditions, musical authenticity is often
conceived as a birthright. Hankus Netsky, the director of the New England Conservatory
Klezmer Band, recounts that when he became interested in Klezmer music somewhat late in
his career, he was told by his uncle Jerry, the last of the older-generation Jewish
clarinetists on the Philadelphia scene, the only way to learn klezmer was to be "born into
it." Although by bloodline, Nitsky is certainly related to the klezmer tradition, according
to his uncle, even he could not achieve true authenticity in the idiom without growing
up in it.9 It seems that lived experience, early exposure, and continual
immersion are the most crucial requirements for acquiring ethnic musical authenticity.
Joel Rudinow states that "other things being equal, the more directly one's knowledge claims
are grounded in first-hand experience, the more unassailable one's authority."10
Can Don Byron be considered a new initiate into the Jewish American musical community and his
music capable of futhering ethnic solidarity among American Jews? Byron's album
Plays the Music of Mickey Katz has received both commercial and critical acclaim in the
klezmer community, but his "pro-ethnicity" message may not be directed solely at Jewish
audiences and Jewish concerns. Perhaps Byron's "pro-ethnicity" message reflects
on the ability of music to speak both directly to ethnic sensibilities--to resonate with
a specific community and culture -- and to afford a sense of ethnic sympathy or
understanding to outsiders.
In the last few decades, scholars from within several disciplines have become increasingly
dissatisfied with the extant discourses on race, genetics, nationality, and even culture.
Many are now investigating ethnicity as a flexible marker of social solidarity and in-group
belonging. In a 1994 article titled 'Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White
People Sing the Blues?" Joel Rudinow argues that:
Unlike race . . . which is supposed to be innate and in nature, ethnicity requires no
genetic or biological foundation. Ethnicity is a matter of acknowledged common culture, based
on shared items of cultural significance such as experience, language, religion, history,
habitat, and the like. Ethnicity is essentially a socially conferred status -- a
matter of communal acceptance, recognition, and respect.11
Robert Walser writes that "music, because of its relative immateriality and discursive
autonomy, may be particularly well-suited to participate in the fluid relationships
of discourses and history that we associate with postmodernism."12 When
discussing the polka mass, he finds that "it not only draws on the strength of
the specific ethnic identities but also reaches across them to make common cause in the
face of shared threats."13
Are there enough similarities in the African and Jewish experience in America to allow a
black jazz musician some access to expressive authenticity in klezmer music? While I could
posit similarities based on a history of ethnic persecution (slavery and the Holocaust) and
racist treatment (segregaton and anti-Semitism), this would be subscribing to
the "myth of ethnic memory" described by Rudinow. As he points out, baby-boomer
Jewish Americans have no more claim to an inviolable understanding of the Holocaust
experience than middle-class, urban blacks have of the southern, rural origins of the
blues.14 These observations aside, it must be admitted that American society, on the whole,
is often slow to reflect changing attitudes towards ethnic diversity, and many remnants of these historical sentiments
still exist today.
I am tempted to follow Slobin and Walser and dismiss the issue of authenticity as an artificial
"etic" categorization. As Walser writes, "ethnic musicians typically create with
little concern for 'authenticity or purity'."15 If a performer
is considered an ethnic insider and audiences are appreciative of the performance, then there would
seem to be little need for anxiety over authenticity. While ethnic musicians and audiences may not be
preoccupied with judging authenticity, I believe a sense of fluency, credibility, and integrity are essential to
a valued, in-group ethnic performance.
Charles Keil asserts that ethnicity is "the source of all powerful music styles." He fears that in this
postmodern world we are finally realizing the importance of ethnic expression only to lose it to the
staleness of the museum and the overpowering blandness of the shopping mall and suburbia."16
Even if we were to accept Keil's fundamental position, we must be aware that a musical genre evolves beyond
the confines of its ethnic birth just as surely as a human being outgrows both the nurturing
and nest of its parents. Hankus Netsky describes "postmodern" Klezmer as something which "can no longer be
confined . . . . Even its wailing sound, its essence, can be imitated and learned." He asks us, "How can
anyone put walls around an ethnic identity that has no home?"17 Joel Rudinow quotes Amiri
Baraka -- who is often read as one of the most protectionist and Afrocentric jazz writers -- on the "appropriation"
of jazz music by white musicians: "The success of this 'appropriation' signaled the
existence of an American music, where before there was a negro muisc."18
The boundary-stretching musical approach exemplified by Katz's music and Byron's interpretations do
much to invigorate and expand American Jewish and jazz traditions. The clarinet, once the leading force
of the Swing Era jazz, has been almost completely neglected for the last 50 years. African Americans
have been even rarer on the instrument; the perennial poll-winners of Downbeat and other jazz magazines
have been Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Guiffre, Tony Scott, and Buddy DeFranco. Within this obvious void
of contemporary black jazz clarinet players, Byron, with his considerable talent,
could have easily chosen a straight-and-narrow path to mainstream jazz and gained recognition.
However, he has been an ardent explorer of both avant-garde and ethnically diverse musical
territories.
Byron has pointed out in interviews that there is no standard jazz clarinet sound or approach.19
This may be one reason why his foray into klezmer and other distantly related musical traditions does not
seem incongruous. The inherent flexibility, playfulness, often mystical approach to essentially secular
music, and the history of hardship and ethnic persecution that are embodied on both jazz and klezmer musics,
may make them brethren of sorts.
American ethnic musics, whether newly created or transplanted, seem to share an openness to
combining elements in the dynamic process of defining musical and ethnic identity. It may be that these
musical traditions necessarily take on some ethnic identity component of "American-ness." Mark Slobin
concludes that "each generation must define for itself, as Americans, how it wants to declare ethnic allegiance."20
While each new immigrant population often must struggle against the current hegemonic power to maintain and express its cultural
and ethnic sensibilities, a new sense of American solidarity--at the worst extreme a sense of patriotic
nationalism, at the best extreme a sense of ethnic synergy--may evolve from this open and dynamic
ethnoscape.
NOTES
1. Don Byron, http://www.well.com/user/ari/klez/byron.79313-2.html (1996).
2. Ibid.
3. Henry Sapoznik, The Compleat Klezmer (Cedarhurst, NY: Tara Publications, 1978), 7.
Plays the Music of Mickey Katz, Electra-Nonsuch CD 79313-2 (1993).
5. Ibid.
6. e.g., The New England Klezmer Conservatory Band, Klezmorim, The Klezmatics, etc.
7. Mark Slobin, "Klezmer Music: An American Ethnic Genre," in Yearbook for Traditional
Music 16 (1984), 334-41.
8. Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan, eds., Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1975).
9. Hankus Netsky, "Klezmer Music: Local Rumbles and Distant Echoes," paper presented at the
1997 SEM national conference (Pittsburgh), 1.
10. Joel Rudinow, "Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?" in
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52, No. 1 (1994), 132.
11. Ibid., 128.
12. Robert Walser, "The Polka Mass: Music of Postmodern Ethnicity." American Music
10, No. 2 (1992), 1998.
13. Ibid., 196.
14. Rudinow 1994, 132.
15. Walser 1992, 194.
16. Charles Keil, "'Ethnic' Music Traditions in the USA (Black Music; Country Music;
Others; All)," Popular Music 13, No. 2 (1994), p. 175.
17. Netsky 1997, 6.
18. Rudinow 1994, 6.
19. Don Byron, http://www.well.com/user/ari/klez/byron.79313-2.html (1996).
20. Slobin 1984, 35.
David Borgo is a jazz saxophonist, educator, and ethnomusicologist. He holds a Bachelors in
Music degree from Indiana University and has toured throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.
He is currently a candidate for the Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at U.C.L.A., teaches jazz history and
world music courses for the U.C. and California State University systems, and works regularly as a
freelance musician.
Updated 8/31/98