Music between weddings and funerals. The Klezmer!

This musical history begins in a very distant era, along the roads that connect the east to the west, impregnating itself over the millennia of history, blood, destruction and rebirth and surviving as only music can sometimes do: from the destruction of a Temple to the temple of music, Carnegie Hall!

It is il 70 AD, we are in Jerusalem, in the State of Judea. The Jews have been in revolt since the year 66 AD against the Romans. The Roman general Tito decides to put an end to the tumult with an assault as merciless as it is definitive: the Temple of Jerusalem is razed to the ground, the "opponents" destroyed. What remains today is the famous Western Wall, a must for Jews from all over the world and a place of pilgrimage of universal faith.

Among the survivors, many are sold as slaves, the rest are forced to abandon their land forever. It is the beginning of the Diaspora, the migration, the exile, the dissolution of a people that in various stages and variations reaches the present day. The Jews begin their slow path. A part goes to Spain and the Iberian Peninsula (the community Sephardi), another stops in Asia (the community Oriental woody eau de toilette.); the last one, the one that interests us most for the unfolding of this story, goes to the Balkans. It is the community Ashkenazim.

Jewish music has its roots in ritual celebrations, feasts, it is already mentioned in the Bible before Christ, but starting from the defeat of 70 AD the rabbis try in some way to oppose it. There is a people now to be rebuilt and a land to seek! Despite the bans, the tradition of playing at weddings and funerals survives.

In Hebrew KIU means "object, tool", heart it means "making music". The term is born from the union of these two words Klezmer. The word is initially used to indicate instrumentsthe musicians (literally instrument for making music) but soon ends up being the reference of a real musical genre that sums up the music these small amateur street bands that play at weddings, funerals and bar mitzvah. The musicians are the klezmorim (plural of Klezmer).

The first documented Klezmer player is in Samaria in the XNUMXnd century AD, Yakobius ben Yakobius.

Along the road that leads from Judea to Europe, Jewish music has been enriched over the centuries with various elements, mixing with the popular traditions of the host nations and growing over the centuries, up to the present day.

Already from the sixteenth century it became a real musical genre, even if it was necessary to wait until the middle of the twentieth century for the attribution of a specific name. Until then it is referred to simply as Yiddish music.

Klezmer is easily identifiable thanks to its expressive melodies that at times recall the voice, with clarinets and other instruments that they laugh o they cry.

Transportable instruments are used: violins, violas, the cimbalom, wood, brass and percussion. The brass plays an increasing role since the birth of the military bands of the nineteenth century. The emblematic instrument of the Jewish world of the ghettos is certainly the violin, but from the mid-800th century in the Klezmer the clarinetto making a central contribution that will mark the character of the most typical sounds.

From the XNUMXth-XNUMXth century there is another people who have been victims of diaspora who travel the world. They are the Roma, the Gypsies, the Gypsies… It is inevitable that the two musical cultures, which for a period migrate towards the same Balkan direction, have contacts, each enriching the music of the other. The similarities between the genders often get confused. A partnership that lasts for three hundred years.

The klezmorim begin to play with i țigani lăutari (in Romanian gypsies / gipsy players), belonging to the Roma ethnic group that soon became the largest minority in the Balkans and above all in Romania (and still is today).

It is precisely in Romania, with particular reference to regions such as the Moldova, the Bessarabia, the Bucovina that there is the greatest development of the Klezmer. Even today the legacy in Romanian dances like Time e Sickle, in vocal genres such as Doina. It is no coincidence that most of modern Klezmer and its repertoire come from the musical work done in the nineteenth century in Basarab (Bessarabia), at the time in Romania (ed today only for half) and that the first recording of which we know consists of the "Romanian Fantasies" performed by the violinist Josef Solinsky between the 1907 and the 1908.

Until 1940, the Second World War, Jews and Romanians coexisted in a relationship of equal rights (in 1878, at the time of the creation of Romania as an independent state, Jews were granted equal rights); Roma, enslaved for centuries, regain their freedom since 1850. However, the situation changes quickly and, with the pogrom Russians of the late 800th and early 900th centuries, the Second World War and racial persecutions, a new emigration began. Salvation this time had for many the name of United States of America.

At this point, retracing this story from the beginning, it seems a bit surreal that a ritual music sung over 2000 years ago in the East, crosses Europe and reaches the Far West, heavily influencing what will be universally recognized as Jazz!
Yet the debt that jazz owes to Klezmer is now well known. Jewish musicians who leave Europe bring instruments with them, giving new life to overseas music, introducing ethnic elements, and the use of brass.

PeWe are the Jewish son of parents of Russian origin George Gershwin (to the registry office Jacob Gerschowitz), Benny Goodman (clarinetist, son of Russian immigrants), Stan Getz (to the registry office Stanley Gayetsky of Ukrainian parents), Leonard Bernstein (son of Polish immigrants), Aaron Copland (son of Russian immigrants), Irving Berlin (to the registry office Izrail 'Moiseevič Bejlin, born in Belarus and emigrated) who knew how to mix their Jewish roots with Afro-American blues traditions, bringing together various musical genres from classical to jazz, blues and gospel.

It is no coincidence that the first sound film in history is "The jazz singer", from 1927, in which a Jewish singer, against the wishes of his parents, stops singing in the synagogue and devotes himself to jazz .

Curiosity

- The earliest written record of Klezmorim's presence is from the fifteenth century

- Klezmer's first European public concert was given by the Russian Josef Gusikov in 1835 with a particular xylophone of his own invention. Liszt and Mendelssohn commented positively on the performance.

- The first recorded recording is that of the “Romanian Fantasies” performed by the violinist Josef Solinsky between the 1907 and the 1908.

Where to find out more about Klezmer?

Clarinet South Festival - 9-11 July 2015 - Sala Consilina (SA)

Master held by Guido Arbonelli for clarinet