New York Klezmer in the Early Twentieth Century: The Music of Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras

Abstract

With the resurgence of klezmer music in the late twentieth century and its subsequent turn into a global phenomenon, the repertoire and culture of the klezmorim past and present has become a subject of scholarly inquiry in musicology-at-large (that is, ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and theory) and in cultural studies. The last twenty years alone saw a surge of studies, culminating in nearly one thousand publications that appeared largely around the world’s northern hemisphere, from the United States and Canada to various European countries, Israel, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, China and Japan—a “klezmer turn,” as it were. Amongst this plethora of publications are a few dozen books, some of which discuss klezmer music peripherally, others center on it. Joel Rubin was amongst the first to canonize klezmer in musicology, most notably with his monograph in German, Klezmer-Musik, coauthored with Rita Ottens in 1999, a significant year for klezmer scholarship indeed. Momentous publications followed, from Mark Slobin’s Fiddler on the Move to Yale Strom’s Book of Klezmer, Hankus Netzsky’s Klezmer: Music and Community in Twentieth-Century Jewish Philadelphia, to Walter Zev Feldman’s monumental Klezmer: Music, History and Memory. As with many of these authors, Rubin is both an accomplished performer and a seasoned scholar, and with New York Klezmer in the Early Twentieth Century he has provided an impressively comprehensive study that centers on two of klezmer’s greats: the clarinetists Naftule Brandwein (1884–1963) and Dave Tarras (1895–1989). Rubin approached this subject over a vast narrative of nearly five hundred pages, and he does so with in-depth knowledge and eloquence. To begin, Rubin’s first chapter provides the reader with a short history of klezmorim in Europe in order to lay the foundation for what is to come. Indeed, as Rubin states in his introduction, “it’s not possible to fully understand American klezmer music without knowledge of European history” (p. 5). After a broad overview of Jewish life in towns and cities, he then focuses specifically on the role of music in Jewish eastern Europe in order to trace the emergence of klezmer as a culture. The klezmer kapelye as a nineteenth-century phenomenon receives particular attention. Rubin also details the klezmorim’s differing performance contexts, such as the Jewish wedding, the military, and events by various non-Jewish groups. These preliminaries lead to the first substantial chapter, which brings the reader straight to New York. Rubin begins by sketching life in the Yiddish-speaking