Much as I welcome the end of the Yom Kippur 25-hour fast, I’m invariably left feeling a bit sad at day’s close by the prospect of having to wait a full year before the evocative sounds of the liturgy are heard once more.
But this year – 5773 by one count, 2012 by another – my sense of loss is offset by the news that the celebrated clarinetist and klezmer musician, Andy Statman, will be visiting GW on October 4th.
Once anathematized by aspiring middle-class American Jews of the mid-20th century, who derided its pulsating rhythms and exuberant trills as inappropriately déclassé (read East European), klezmer music was seized on by their grandchildren of the 1970s as a vibrant, authentic and musically complex form of Jewish cultural expression.
Since then, the American Jewish community’s embrace of klezmer has become so full-throttled that no public Jewish event is complete without a full complement of klezmorim to pull out all the stops.
The story of that cultural transformation – and transvaluation - still awaits its historian. But one thing is abundantly clear: Andy Statman set it in motion.
This coming Thursday, at 7:30 p.m., at Lisner Auditorium, Statman’s contribution will be recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts at a concert celebrating the many sounds that make up the nation’s musical patrimony, from bluegrass and gospel to klezmer.
…And the beat goes on.
