No, I'm not against klezmer music. This past sunday Mike Attfield and I played a mixture of traditional contra and klezmer music for a loca contra dance. It all happened because it turns out that contras were often formally choreographed by court dance masters, and that was frequently a jewish profession. So these dance masters took the dances home to their villages and ran the same formations (what do you call those things?) to their own music. Of course the dancing style was also jewish with beseeching reaches toward heaven and motions immitating a tailor sewing (sublime to ridiculous???)
So I told this story to Cindy O'Brien, local contra dance organizer, and right away she jumped on it and we had a date, a caller, a place, a sound system, etc.
Everything went great. The crowd was a bit small, but very enthusiastic. Nobody can say that shers aren't foot stompers. One comment from a dancer unfamiliar with the music. "I didnt' realize that music was so anxious." I guess we musicians did our job in communicating the underlying tam (soul) of the music. Roz had a mandolin cameo on two Sirbas, taught some body motions and language, and lead a circle dance. Who had the most fun? Probably me. I'm really enjoying getting out and playing!
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