It's actually really fascinating, with Zev Feldman giving daily lectures (see above, with Georg Brinkmann translating into German), working with great musicians, and getting to practice my German. Comparing YSW with KlezKanada and KlezKamp, there are some huge differences. First of all, almost everyone is European. Actually, the one exception is Shaun Williams (apologies if I spell your name wrong), who is American, but living in Ukraine at the moment.
The second difference is that there are very few Jews here, with the exception of most of the faculty. It's an interesting cross section of musicians, but the connection to religion is much less here. Part of that is probably because there are fewer Jewish people, and especially fewer observant Jewish people, and therefore, there needs to be no concessions made. However, Alan and the faculty are very conscious of this and make a much greater effort to ground the music in Ashkenazic Jewish history and tradition. The exploration of non-dance genres (this year's theme) allows for an exploration of the now extinct Ashkenazic Jewish wedding music in a way that ties closely to the religious traditions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
It is now Thursday night after the jam session. I'm exhausted, but no more so than usual. I have now hit what I call the "klezmer wall". All the tunes start to sound the same. Thank god I have my iPod, which allows me to at least listen to non-klezmer music when I run in the morning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
This concludes today's somewhat scattershot blog entry. We'll see how often I get to update over the next week and a half. Until then, tschuss!
No comments:
Post a Comment