As described above, the
area in which the Ashkenazi settled had a complex history - boundaries changing
as political powers came and went including the kingdoms and Empires of Poland,
Russia, Austria and the Ottomans. However the Jews in the Pale of Settlement with
their own jurisdiction and tax collection structure had a certain level of autonomy.
It was an area subject to unrest over the centuries and a pattern emerged
of the local populations attacking the Jewish communities at times of trouble
- the resulting massacres were called pogroms and started in the 17th century
but became particularly severe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This
led to a new wave of emigration west into Germany, Western Europe and the Americas,
both North and South. There they joined established Jewish communities of Sephardic
Jews but later became numerically and culturally dominant. Between 1880 and 1914
nearly one third of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe emigrated, 2.5 million
to New York.
The musicians' guilds have been mentioned above, their 20th
century equivalent was the union. Excluded from the American Federation of Musicians
Union, the immigrants to the US formed their own union The Russian Progressive
Musicians Union. As well as welfare and other functions, the Union provided bands
for social and political events. The immigrants also formed self-help groups based
on the town of origin, the Landmanshaft, which also met welfare and social needs,
including employment opportunities for klezmorim.
There were opportunities
for amateur musicians too - for example the workers' choruses and mandolin orchestras.
The choruses covered all shades of the political spectrum from the pro-soviet
Freiheit Gezangs Ferain, the moderate socialist Arbeiter Ring chorus through to
the labour Zionist Paole Zionist Singing Society who sang in Hebrew.
As
in Europe, the klezmorim in the US played for weddings and increasingly for barmitzvahs
(a Jewish boy's coming of age celebration), a new excuse for celebration and a
party. The role of the badkhn faded out (replaced by the caterer or maitre d')
but the band played on, mixing traditional standards with current popular music.
Weddings lasted only a day rather than a week and were less ritualised. Some traditional
elements remained - the clarinettist would step down off the stage to perform
a doina, between the soup and the main course!
However, from the early
20th century there was an explosion in other forms of entertainment and popular
culture that are part of the history related to klezmer. Henry Sapoznik writes
about this Yiddish cultural explosion in New York but it was reflected elsewhere
in North and South America and in Europe, wherever there were significant populations
of Ashkenazi Jews.
Jewish
traditional religious practice since the 16th century included an element of theatre
during the festival of Purim when playlets or Purimspeils were enacted to tell
the story of Esther which the festival celebrates. In the late 19th century a
journalist called Golfarben is credited with the start of a Yiddish theatre, first
in Jassy, Romania, and later in Odessa. He mixed Jewish klezmorim and badkhnim
with non-Jewish actors and singers to perform musical plays which he put together.
These were very successful and his plays were produced elsewhere in Europe and
America. A genre of Yiddish theatre evolved spanning a whole range of styles from
highbrow Yiddish versions of Shakespeare to comedy, musical theatre and shund
(trash).
The popularity of the Yiddish musical theatre led to a merchandising
opportunity but instead of
T-shirts and posters the audience came away from
the show with song sheets of the tunes they'd just heard.
There was a boom
in piano ownership in the early 20th century and this medium of home entertainment
provided a market for music and song sheets. An early hit in this form was Solomon
Simulwitz's A Brivele der Mama (A Letter to Mother) in 1908. The theatres themselves
published song sheets from their shows but other publishers soon took advantage
of the growing interest in written music providing written versions of current
klezmer repertoire as well as show tunes. In 1909 the Operetta 'Little Flower'
was published, this included Khosn Kale Mazeltov (Congratulations to the Groom
and Bride) which became a wedding 'standard'. Plays were also published which
enabled them to be performed elsewhere by professional or amateur groups.
The late 19th and early 20th century also saw
the growth of popular entertainment in the vaudeville theatres with their programmes
of sketches, acrobatics and musical turns. Some of the novelty acts were based
on ethnic stereotypes, German, Irish, blacks and Jews. Many klezmorim found work
in the vaudeville theatres both as musicians and as stage acts - 'blacking up'
as well as playing the Jewish stereotypes.
As well as the vaudeville theatres
there were the cinemas (42 of them in New York's Lower East Side in the early
years of the 20th century) that screened silent movies, these required musical
accompaniment and generated work for klezmorim. As well as the westerns, dramas
and romances a few of the films depicted Jewish life which allowed the klezmorim
to play a familiar tune or two, which would in turn be recognised by the Jewish
members of the audience.
Next - Some musicians
from the early 20th century
