Klezmer Shpil. with Arkady Goldenshtein, clarinet. Emil Kroiter, accordion, composer-arranger. Israel: OR-TAV Music Publications/Klezmerhouse, 2007. compact disc.
Reviewed by Jardena Gertler-Jaffe
Klezmer Shpil is a collaboration between clarinetist Arkady Goldenshtein and accordionist Emil Kroitor. Its sixteen tracks were composed and arranged by Kroitor and performed by an ensemble brought together specifically for this album, which was released by OR-TAV Music Publications in 2007. Every track prominently features Kroitor and Goldenshtein, as well as violinist Isaac Kurtz, together playing impressive contrapuntal and ornamented lines. As an ethnomusicologist and klezmer enthusiast, I am intrigued by new klezmer music and the debates that surround it. With regard to this recording, my challenge is to appreciate its musical accomplishments while remaining critical of its presentation of an uncomplicated view of the lineage and heritage of klezmer. Read the rest of this entry »
Ladino transliteration from the original in soletreo (Hebrew script of Ottoman Ladino dialect). Penned starting in 1881, the autobiographical account incorporates event descriptions and commentary on Jewish community life in Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece). Sa’adi’s motivations for writing his memoirs included a desire to record customs and events for future generations, and to voice his personal concerns and hopes for Jewish life in Salonica. Sa’adi’s primary occupations were as an editor and print-maker, but he was also respected within the Jewish community and city as a singer and composer of songs for synagogue and special occasions. It is this second occupation that makes A Jewish Voice a valuable resource for readers with interest in music and Jewish life.
During the last two decades a formidable number of excellent studies have appeared in English and German that have given us an ever fuller picture of the compromised, politicized reality of Germany’s musical culture during the National Socialist period. Lily Hirsch’s book, A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany: Musical Politics and the Berlin Jewish Culture League, is a valuable contribution to this body of knowledge.
In the annals of Jewish music, is any genre as fraught as opera? In nineteenth-century Europe, this most elaborate of western art forms seduced and dazzled Jewish admirers from Theodor Herzl (whose visions of Zionism were inspired by Tannhäuser) to Emma Goldman (transfixed by a performance of Il Trovatore in Königsberg). The lure of opera for cantors became the stuff of legends (the story of Yoel-Dovid Strashunsky’s fall from grace when he abandoned the synagogue in Vilna for the opera house in Warsaw inspired works of fiction, theater, and film). Jewish opera composers became celebrities (Meyerbeer, Offenbach), and their musicianship the target of anti-Semitic attack (most famously, Wagner’s Das J
When I was invited to review this book, I was under the impression that it was written by an ethnomusicologist, given that it was advertised by its publisher under the categories Judaica, Ethnomusicology, and Spanish Traditions, and by a bookseller under Ethnomusicology, Sephardic songs, and Jewish music. To my surprise, I learned that its Mexican-born author obtained her university degrees in the fields of Latin-American Literature (Licenciatura from the Universidad Iberoamericana)[1] and Comparative Literature (earning both her masters degree and doctorate from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). Even the title of her masters thesis, “Los símbolos de la naturaleza en los cantos judeo-españoles: una visión de la lírica popular hispánica [‘The symbols of nature in Judeo-Spanish song; a view of the Hispanic popular lyric’],” completed in 2003, and that of her doctoral dissertation, “Simbología poética y visión del mundo en los cantos judeo-españoles [‘Poetic symbolism and worldview in Judeo-Spanish song’],” submitted in 2006, clearly indicate that both deal solely with the lyrical/ poetic content of the songs she examined.[2] And, whereas both furnished the material for the monograph under review, one can only surmise that the confusion caused by referring to the book under review as an ethnomusicological work arose from commencing its title with Cantos Judeo-españoles. 
