{"id":30252,"date":"2023-04-26T08:40:37","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T12:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=30252"},"modified":"2023-09-28T16:05:16","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T20:05:16","slug":"israel-independence-day-klezmer-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/26\/israel-independence-day-klezmer-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY, KLEZMER AND ME"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>At various <\/strong><\/span>Yiddishe Cup gigs, I was often surprised how the crowd would ask for Israeli tunes more than klezmer (Eastern European) tunes. Jews in Cleveland wanted Israeli music, got that? OK, I gave it to them. (Aside: classic Israeli tunes are easier to play than klezmer, which is instrument-based and leans toward virtuosic. Also, klezmer rhythms are typically more complex than classic Israeli tunes.)<\/p>\n<p>Yiddishe Cup learned a lot of Israeli tunes, enough that many Israelis assumed we could belt out contemporary (not \u201cclassic\u201d) Israeli music.<\/p>\n<p>Israeli music &#8212;\u00a0 in the trade &#8212; is known as \u201cTel Aviv bus station music.\u201d We had no clue how to play it. Luckily there was an Israeli singer in Cleveland, Shlomo Ziton, to cover that niche for 0ur town&#8217;s Israeli-American contingent.<\/p>\n<p>On one Israel Independence Day (Yom Ha&#8217;atzmaut) I got in a dispute with a dance enthusiast who complained I wasn\u2019t playing enough Israeli folk dances. \u201cToo much klezmer,\u201d he said. So I worked out a formula: play Israeli <em>chalutzim<\/em> (pioneer) classics, and for contemporary Israeli stuff plug in my iPhone or CD (depending on the decade). Very little klezmer.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>Happy birthday,<\/strong><\/span> Israel!<\/p>\n<p>And by the way, there was an article by Daniel Hoffman in <em>Haaret<\/em>z on Monday headlined &#8220;Why Do Israelis Still Hate Klezmer Music?&#8221; (Paywall.) &#8220;Secular Israelis have long rejected klezmer, an overt, emotional expression of Ashkenazi Jewish musical culture. Sometimes the strength of that opposition \u2013 and resistance to anything Yiddish, religious or associated with the Holocaust \u2013 knocks me flat.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; At various Yiddishe Cup gigs, I was often surprised how the crowd would ask for Israeli tunes more than klezmer (Eastern European) tunes. Jews in Cleveland wanted Israeli music, got that? OK, I gave it to them. (Aside: classic Israeli tunes are easier to play than klezmer, which is instrument-based and leans toward virtuosic. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30252"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31018,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30252\/revisions\/31018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}