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The Bands of Nahalat Shalom
Jewish music and dance at Nahalat
Shalom
Members
of
Nahalat Shalom
are fortunate
that they can
enjoy live
Jewish
music
at many
functions and services performed by
these
3
bands: The Nahalat Shalom
Community Klezmer Band,
Alavados-Nahalat Shalom’s
Holy Days Band, and The Rebbe’s Orkestra-Klezmer
and Judaic ensemble. Our congregation’s Yiddish dance troupe “Rikud” also leads
traditional Jewish dances to the music of these great bands.
The
Rebbe’s Orkestra
(
http://arnoproductionsnm.com/index.htm
), a popular professional concert and simcha band that performs throughout the
southwest,
includes
Nahalat Shalom’s cantorial soloist and music
director Beth Cohen (violin,
mandolin and vocals),
Barbara Friedman (electric
bass), Randy Edmunds (guitar)
and Debo Orlofsky (accordion).
Beth, Barbara, and Randy have also performed
Balkan folk
music extensively
for over 20 years, and find
the musical and community connections resonate in klezmer music. Barbara Friedman says, “I love these people and playing with them. I love the
melodies and the different scales. . .and this music
is
connected
to Middle Eastern and Balkan music.
It feels like Jewish soul music. The most fun is playing for people to dance.”
Randy notes, “I think playing music brings people together
as a community—this is something we have lost as a society. It gives people a
chance to dance and be together in a way we don’t get to much any more.”
Our beloved and departed
Sephardic cantorial soloist,
Lorenzo Dominguez, who played guitar and
sang with The Rebbe’s
Orkestra and also performed with and named
Nahalat Shalom’s holy days band “Alavados”
(“supplications”),
said that the music connected him with the spiritual dimension: “The music
enhances everything for me spiritually, makes the circle more complete. The
Ladino (Sephardic) music is something I’ve been listening to for a long time,
but now, learning the Klezmer music is deepening and completing my experience.”
Alavados
Holy Days band
is currently comprised of cantorial soloist Beth Cohen (guitar, violin and
vocals) and congregation members Barbara Friedman (electric bass), Jake Zengerle
(percussion), with violinists Jeff Brody and Gabrielle Rosen. Since 1999,
Alavados has provided beautiful accompaniment for our congregational prayers,
songs and dances during Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre, Yom Kippur, Shabbat Shuvah,
Freylekhe Shabbes, Channukah Shabbat, and Tu B’Shevat services. All of the
musicians in Alavados are also members of Nahalat Shalom’s 20 piece
intergenerational Community Klezmer band.
The
Nahalat Shalom Community Klezmer band
first began in 1995 as accompaniment to
a Hanukkah service. We can
all delight in the fact that the Community Klezmer Band is not only
multi-generational but often
has several family groups playing
together in it.
Under Nahalat Shalom’s cantorial soloist
Beth
Cohen’s direction, this
band has developed a repertoire of music to play for dancing at
monthly Freylekhe
Shabbes
services and at other
holiday freylekhes
during Chanukah, Purim, and Passover.
Leading the traditional Yiddish and Jewish dances to the band’s music is our
own Rikud Yiddish dance troupe, which began in 2001 under the
co-direction of Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and her dancing-master friend Erik Bendix.
Band and dancers rehearse together on Sundays from 2-4pm and it’s open for the
public to join. Click here for the
schedule and details. The band and dancers also host, perform and study at the
annual world-renown Klezmer music and dance weekend “Klezmerquerque”, which
features performances, workshops and presentations with world class Klezmer
musicians and dancers. Past “Klezmerquerque” guest artists include Joshua
Horowitz, Stuart Brotman and Cookie Segelstein (of “Budowitz”, “Brave Old World”
and “Veretski Pass”), klezmer clarinet virtuoso Margot Leverett (founder of “The
Klezmatics”), klezmer flute expert and band teacher Adrianne Greenbaum and
klezmer dance masters Erik Bendix, Shulim Zaltman (from Moldovia) and Steve
Weintraub. Get ready for
the next “Klezmerquerque”
traditionally held in February over President’s Day weekend and look
for The Community Klezmer band and Rikud at upcoming Nahalat Shalom
and community
events!
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Klezmer Music: A Short History
by Janice Hart and Judy Brown
Neither the Holocaust nor the migration out of Eastern Europe nor assimilation could stop it. Klezmer music has undergone an enormous revival, which is also happily serving to help keep the Yiddish language alive. The revival has its origin in part in a renewed pride in their ethnicity that Jews began finding in the 70’s, as a new generation of Jewish musicians forged connections across space and time with the musicians of 19th century Eastern Europe.
The term klezmer comes from the Hebrew words “kley zemer”, referring to the musical instruments themselves; gradually, the identities of the musician and his instrument merged to be covered by the one term. References to klezmer bands are found in surviving town records, memoirs, and historical accounts as early as the 15th century. Paintings and woodcuts from those times show Jewish musicians playing instruments similar to those of their non-Jewish neighbors.
The connections between secular and liturgical Jewish music are evident in klezmer scales and ornamentation, which derive from prayer modes and vocal styles used in cantorial music. This sets Jewish music apart, but there was also much cross-fertilization with non-Jewish music of the regions. Jews and non-Jews , especially Gypsies, often played together. Jewish musicians, preferred for their wide traveling, broad repertoire, modesty, and sobriety, were often hired to play at non-Jewish weddings.
The wedding was the best-known milieu for the klezmer. In addition to local peasant dance tunes, the klezmer played a repertoire that reflected traditional Jewish wedding rituals, providing processionals to accompany the community to the shul, as well as music for veiling the bride before the ceremony, seating her after, for paying respect to the in-laws, and for escorting older family members home after the wedding.
The huge movement of Jews who came from Eastern Europe to the US at the end of the 19th century included many klezmorim. The emergence of the recording industry, radio, and Yiddish theater in the US provided sources of work for the klezmer and produced many recordings that tell us what the music of the time sounded like. Jewish weddings still featured the traditional music. But as tastes changed and dance forms were forgotten, klezmer music became more of a nostalgia stimulator and the older klezmer repertoire diminished in size.
The 70’s saw the revival of many traditional world musics (e.g., Celtic, Balkan, “Old-Timey”, etc.) and fortunately klezmer music is among them. And just as Jews have lived all over the world, the klezmer revival has been a worldwide phenomenon. Berlin alone boasts over 30 klezmer bands, and there are klez bands from Australia, Alaska, and Buenos Aires. Alicia Svigals, of the Klezmatics, makes the point that “klezmer isn’t the music of an extinct culture…it’s a hardy piece of an evolving culture.” And nowadays, klezmer emerges in many mutations. Some groups like Brave Old World employ political lyrics while others like The Klezmatics utilize funk and even hip-hop. Other bands, such as Budowitz, endeavor to recapture traditional klezmer sounds played on 19th century instruments. As the old 78’s and radio recordings of the 30’s are lost, we can thank music historians and modern musicians who are working and playing to give this, our music, new life.
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