350
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Artisans
from 34 states
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The Scholars
Who Saved Klezmer
Novi Expo
Center
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Musicologists, including a native Detroiter, set the
stage for revival performers like the Klezmatics.
NOVI
October 19, 20, 21, 2001
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GEORGE ROBINSON
Special to the Jewish News
rary zeitgeist and post-modern aesthet-
ic" — through concerts, television and
15 albums.
istory played a series of
The Detroit Connection
nasty tricks on klezmer
music, the bluesy-jazzy
Slouching comfortably in a chair in
folk music of Eastern
his sparely furnished apartment on
European Jews.
New York City's Upper West Side, the
First, it sent many of the musicians
58-year-old klezmer scholar Slobin
to America, where klezmer was dis-
smiles behind his glasses. With his
solved into the musical stewpot, at
curly steel-gray hair and puckish smile,
best a trace element in the chemistry
he looks like Joel Grey's smart kid
of American music.
brother. A professor in
Then it destroyed the cul-
the music department
ture — and the people —
at Wesleyan
that had nurtured klezmer
University, Slobin
musicians themselves in
splits his time between
Eastern Europe.
the school's
But, as ethnomusicologist
.Ai%Aa'k
Middletown, Conn.,
Mark Slobin, a Detroit
campus and his New
native, points out, klezmer
York apartment.
returned history's dubious
Slobin's Jewish cul-
favors by not only surviving,
tural heritage was nur-
but thriving, under the most
tured in Detroit. He
unlikely circumstances.
grew up in neighbor-
Ethnomusicologists, like
hoods along 12th
Slobin, study music as an
Street and later Dexter
aspect of culture.
Mark Slobin: "Klezmer
Boulevard, and
Slobin contributed signifi-
is a diaspora within
became bar mitzvah at
candy to the rebirth of
a diaspora."
Congregation B'nai
klezmer when he edited and
Moshe. He attended
translated a collection of the papers
Cass Technical High School and the
and musical transcriptions of the
University of Michigan, earning his
Soviet ethnomusicologist Moshe
Ph.D. in 1969. Both his parents
Beregovski, who did much of his field-
taught at Congregation Shaarey
work in the 1920s and 1930s — diffi-
Zedek, and his 92-year-old mother
cult times in Russian history. Published
lives in Southfield.
in 1981 as Old Jewish Folk Music, that
"Klezmer is a diaspora within a dias-
volume helped shape the repertoire of
pora," Slobin says. "If you had said 15
countless "New Klez" bands in the
years ago that klezmer would be played
early days of the rebirth of klezmer.
all over Europe, that John Zorn would
One of the most prominent of the
be playing a fusion of Ornette
klezmer revival groups is the
Coleman and klezmer, that Itzhak
Klezmatics, who will appear 8:30 p.m.
Perlman would sell 200,000 copies of a
Saturday, Oct. 13, at Orchestra Hall
klezmer album, nobody would believe
in Detroit, as part of the Jewish
you. But that's what has happened."
Community Center of Metropolitan
Now, after more than a decade in
Detroit's 75th anniversary celebration.
which his book was unavailable, to the
Since their founding in 1986, the
great frustration of aficionados of
Klezmatics have spread their brand of
Jewish music, Syracuse University Press
traditional klezmer music — infused
has not only reprinted Slobin's original
with what the group calls "contempo-
English-language edition, but has also
added a second volume of Beregovski's
George Robinson is a New York-based
papers and transcriptions, both of
freelance writer.
which were issued this summer.