<\/p>\n
You rarely find “Hava Nagila”<\/strong><\/span> on klezmer CDs.<\/p>\n Too hackneyed?<\/p>\n No, there’s no such thing as too hackneyed in klez.<\/p>\n “Hava Nagila” is too Israeli.\u00a0 Klezmer is mostly Yiddish-based music from Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n At Klezkamp<\/a> in 1987, the conference director pleaded <\/strong><\/span>with several old-timers not to play “Hava Nagila.”\u00a0 But they insisted.\u00a0 And they added “Mayim,” an Israeli dance, to salt the director’s matzo. \u00a0Yiddish is supposed to trump Hebrew at KlezKamp.<\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup plays more Israeli music than klezmer at parties.<\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup’s new record, Klezmer Guy<\/em><\/a>, has a couple Israeli tunes.\u00a0 The album is mostly live, which gives it an easy-breezy style.\u00a0 Some of the band’s spoken intros are on the record.\u00a0 I told the producer to get rid of the quips, but he objected.\u00a0 Those intros are funny once.\u00a0 Then what?<\/p>\n About half the tunes are creative and\/or original.\u00a0 That’s a decent quotient.\u00a0 And the other half \u2014 the rip-offs \u2014 are only quasi-rip-offs.\u00a0 We try to make the tunes new.\u00a0 For example, we took a Romanian Gypsy tune, “Tsiganeshti,” and turned it into a klez\/beat-box number.\u00a0 [Watch “Tsiganeshti” video here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n I own a lot of Klezmer Guy<\/em> CDs. <\/strong><\/span> I paid for them.\u00a0 (Harvey Pekar used to order 10,000 copies of each American Splendor<\/em> comic book run.\u00a0 Paid for them himself the first few years.\u00a0 The man was running a warehouse.)<\/p>\n On Klezmer Guy<\/em>, the song “Hallelujah”\u00a0 might be the signature tune of the CD. It’s a tune a lot of people know.\u00a0 Barbara Shlensky, the late cojones<\/em>-busting party planner, insisted we play “Hallelujah” whenever she swung open the party room doors to the guests. [Watch “Hallelujah” video here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n Barbara didn’t like us.<\/strong><\/span> That was her job \u2014 dislike the band.\u00a0 Make sure the musicians stayed in line.<\/p>\n What Barbara didn’t get: Klez musicians are from the same social class as the guests.\u00a0 Klez musicians will see the party guests the next day at the school play or swimming pool.\u00a0 Klez musicians will not get drunk and act like Keith Richards.\u00a0 Klez musicians will eat a bowl of cereal after each gig and go directly to bed. You rarely find “Hava Nagila” on klezmer CDs. Too hackneyed? No, there’s no such thing as too hackneyed in klez. “Hava Nagila” is too Israeli.\u00a0 Klezmer is mostly Yiddish-based music from Eastern Europe. At Klezkamp in 1987, the conference director pleaded with several old-timers not to play “Hava Nagila.”\u00a0 But they insisted.\u00a0 And they added […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pekar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","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=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8622,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/8622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n—
\nHear<\/a> an interview, 6\/16\/09, with Klezmer Guy on Israel National Radio.\u00a0 Heads-up: The interview is almost as long as this blog.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"