klezmer

Klezmer music, as I understand it, is Romanian in ancestry. As with many other fascinating Appalachian cultural fusions such as the meeting of African rhythmns with the music of Irish immigrants, Klesmer came to the Blue Ridge mountains with the Gypsies who were gradually pushed west from the coast as this young country expanded.
So we all know about artisan this and that: cheese, bread, tomatoes. The remarkably young people (alleluia!!) who deeply care about these specialty fields of the so-called gourmet are, in my opinion, very clever in bridging the worlds of beauty and body nourishment. Lord only knows how many varieties of succulent tomatoes were discarded when the "need" for monocrops fell into place. I keep reading about so and so variety of wheat that is so much more hardy in, say, an alpine climate, but Monsanto is conning the farmers in India to buy GM seeds (with attendant fertilizers) from a variety that really isn't suited to the climate of the region, promising a great harvest which materializes the first year only, just long enough to hook the farmer on the magic seeds- I go on... my point is that there are places in the world where they see through the bullshit. I am lucky enough to live in one of those places, and there are many pockets of people who see the mad cycle of lies.
Again, lucky am I to be visiting in one of those places. Its fair to assume that people who value the function of art in culture would also value locally grown organic foods and historically relevant music. Klezmer, in the wikipedia, is jewish dance, wedding, and celebration songs. Tonight, I was invited to "sit in" at the practice of a group set to perform at a local dance hall (?) tomorrow night. Read: party at the house shared by the couple who teaches the upstairs clay class. Naomi Dalglish and Micheal Hunt are team teaching with David Stuempfle. I don't know quite how else to put this: Naomi and David are two of the most ernest, lovable, conscious, beautifully bonky totally collected misfits I've ever met. They are to the world of ceramics what the Portland pirate at the Pearl Bakery is to the world of bread. I pass no judgement on who works harder, I just know that these two are in deep integration with the clay they dig from the mama earth: they have devised an entire course about it. I walk upstairs to find oval plaster trays full of 15 varieties of locally dig clays, all rationed out for the initial sensory test in the hands of the classfull of potters who tend to their plasticity (or lack thereof).
Why is the party at their house? because they are as in the band as they are in the earth. Naomi plays violin and sings, Michael plays the drum, a little cymbal, probably a few other things, and there's also a cello (yes!), a clarinet, an accordion, and probably something else that I missed. they were rehearsing. their class was sitting around in love getting drunk on jameson, maker's and a few other things. we got to clapping. then there was dancing. there was a lot of stomping on the floor. we were shaking the floorboards. we formed a circle, then a spiral, and wound around the little house, through the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom in a 1-2-1234 stomp that I am certain will reverberate in the memory of us all. I'm telling you, I've had some maker's but still I assert, this is the stuff of artisan bread. this is it, folks. when this little house built in 1950 is stomped to the point of vibration, when it becomes a music instrument in itself- -
the last song was an atonal duet sung by Naomi and her neighbor. Haunting. in Yiddish, I think, and in so, removing any verbal associations I might have made- the melody simultaneously asking me to close my eyes and be carried away and also maintain how riveted I was by the fact of such a passionate live literally ethereal moment - in a little living room with a fireplace and couches full of drunk, dance-exhausted people, two ladies maintained eye contact throughout the entire three-minute sway of beauty. .