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Gypsy Klezmer Dialectics Jewish and Roma
Gypsy Klezmer Dialectics Jewish and Roma
Ethnomusicology Forum
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ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ remf 20
To cite this article: Carol Silverman (2015) Gypsy/ Klezmer Dialect ics: Jewish and Romani Traces
and Erasures in Cont emporary European World Music, Et hnomusicology Forum, 24: 2, 159-180, DOI:
10. 1080/ 17411912. 2015. 1015040
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Ethnomusicology Forum, 2015
Vol. 24, No. 2, 159–180, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2015.1015040
As klezmer and Balkan Romani music have become popularised in Western Europe
since 1989, an increasing number of performers in both of these genres are non-Roma
and non-Jews. This holds especially true for the new performance complex Gypsy/
klezmer that imputes connections between two of Europe’s quintessential Others, and,
in transforming their ethnic specificities into a generic hybridity, facilitates the
appropriation of their cultural goods by outsiders. I interrogate this complex and its
semiotic conflation of Jews (absent Others constituted historically as over-present) and
Roma (too-present Others who are historically absent) in the current European political
climate that is multiculturalist but increasingly xenophobic. I note that Gypsy/klezmer
performers claim a double authenticity based on a kind of hybridity that validates
appropriation. I argue that specificities of Romani and Jewish geography, history and
musical style are erased precisely as the Gypsy/klezmer complex becomes more popular.
The Balcony Players are an energetic Gypsy & Klezmer band that takes pride in
making people happy and dance around the world. (Balcony Adventures Around
the World 2012)
Klezmer and Gypsy music—they sit quite naturally together—it is all great music—
dance music; and there is … an anthropological relationship between them—that
geographical sway—you can follow the musical journey … of similarities.
Carol Silverman, Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Folklore at the University of Oregon, has engaged in
research with Roma for over 25 years in the Balkans, Western Europe and the USA. Her book Romani Routes:
Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2012), winner of the Merriam Prize
from the Society for Ethnomusicology, explores how Romani music is both an exotic commodity in the world
music market and a trope of multiculturalism in cosmopolitan contexts. Correspondence to: Carol Silverman,
University of Oregon, Department of Anthropology, Eugene, OR 97403-1218, USA. Email: csilverm@
uoreogn.edu
1
I use Gypsy as a marketing category and Roma to refer to the ethnic group. Balkan refers to the southeastern
European peninsula. Space limitations prevent me from presenting a detailed music analysis.
Ethnomusicology Forum 161
‘booming business’ for klezmer, Western European bands and festivals proliferated in
the 1990s, especially in Germany (Waligorska 2013: 27–8).2
Notably, many performers and consumers of post-1990s klezmer music were non-
Jews whose interest in the music was not only about its sound aspects but also about
dealing with the place of Jews in historical memory (Gruber 2002). After Germany’s
unification in 1989, fascination for Jewish culture, both current and past, arose.
Germans were coming to terms both with the Holocaust and with a growing Jewish
population of Germany that became the third largest in Western Europe (Waligorska
2013: 4). In a sense, Jews became familiar figures in popular conceptions of Western
European history. Numerous Holocaust memorials were created across the region,
every German student was required to know about concentration camps, and many
publications examined native complicity with Nazi ideology. The Holocaust also
entered popular culture in Germany via television series, Yiddish language classes and
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art and theatre projects (Waligorska 2013: 42–3). This burgeoning knowledge
contrasted with the tiny numbers of actual Jews in the region; hence I characterise
Jews as ‘over-represented in history’ and under-represented today.
Non-Jewish fascination with klezmer is thus tied to guilt, nostalgia and historical
reconstruction. In addition, Jews are often said to be obsessed with history. As
Bohlman writes: ‘So prevalent is klezmer on Europe’s festival and recording scene
that many regard it as the symbol for healing the wounds left by the holocaust’ (2009:
86). But selective omissions of Jewish history still exist in Europe today. Bohlman
further claims: ‘Klezmer translates the Jewish into the global’, yet the revival of Jewish
music also points to absences and silences surrounding Jews and Jewish culture
(2009: 88).
The ‘Gypsy craze’ commenced in Western Europe in the same post-1989 time
frame, although the two scenes did not overlap until a decade later. Demand for
Romani music swelled after Balkan groups were permitted to tour, and musicians
travelled from local communities to global stages. With the documentary Latcho
Drom and the fiction films of Emir Kusturica, most notably Time of the Gypsies and
Underground, with scores by Goran Bregović, Balkan Romani music reached a wide
European populace.3
In the mid-1990s, non-Romani DJs like Shantel began sampling Balkan Romani
music in their dance-club sets. This turned into a youth sub-culture composed of
dozens of DJs on four continents. Robert Šoko trademarked the term ‘Balkan Beats’,
now a transnational phenomenon referring to Romani music (Dimova 2007). Today,
Balkan Beats DJs play mixes in clubs in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Melbourne,
Istanbul and Mexico City, and in every city and some small towns in Western Europe
(Silverman 2012, 2013, 2015). Balkan brass band music has become so ubiquitous
that a Balkan or Gypsy festival without brass would be an oxymoron; in fact, the
terms Balkan, brass and Gypsy are now used interchangeably in marketing. Brass
2
Rubin’s paper in this volume analyses the role of Israeli clarinettist Giora Feidman.
3
Marković (2008) documented Bregović’s influence. Tony Gatlif’s fiction films, especially Gadjo Dilo, also
promulgated Balkan Gypsy music and culture. See Silverman (2012, 2013).
162 C. Silverman
came to dominate the scene in part because the Kusturica/Bregović films featured
brass bands in striking, outlandish scenes that reinforced historical stereotypes of
Gypsies as free, unruly, quasi-criminal, and outside the bounds of society.
Additionally, the repertoire narrowed to 2/4 and 4/4 metres because they are more
accessible to western audiences.
Brass fit well with the 1990s quest for ‘authenticity’ in world music marketing
(Taylor 2007). Most Europeans shun the electrified wedding music played on
synthesisers that is characteristic of Romani community events, even though this is
perhaps the most vital genre in the Balkans. Brass bands, on the other hand, are acoustic
and seem older and more authentic; audiences note their energy, loudness and visceral
power. Western audiences can also relate to Balkan brass because Western Europe and
the United States have their own brass musical traditions. Finally, in the newest phase
of world music marketing that valorises hybridity, brass bands are depicted as fusion or
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‘authentic hybrid’ because of their innovative repertoires and collaborative projects (see
Taylor 2007; see also Markovic, this volume, and below).
As Streck notes, referring to Ruthers (2012): ‘While the Holocaust dominates the
European—indeed global—culture of remembrance and its institutions, Roma studies are
left to eke out an existence on the margins’ (Streck 2013: 262).4 Roma are clearly less
powerful and less integrated into European institutions. I claim that just as Roma are
under-represented in history, they are over-represented as current threats (e.g. criminal
migrants on your doorstep).
Inversely, Jews loom large as historical victims but their current population figures
are very small. Jews are thus positioned as Europe’s historical ‘Other’ and Roma as
Europe’s current ‘Other,’ creating a potent combination. A famous scene in the 1998
Romanian fictional film Train of Life imagines a connection between Jews and Roma,
unified by persecution. In this scene, Romani and Jewish musicians (both fleeing
from the Nazis) inspire and compete with each other in an orgy of shared music and
dance.5 As I will illustrate, my consultants, too, invoked and romanticised this shared
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4
Ruthers states: ‘In contrast to the Roma/Gypsies, the Jews have sought out and found access to majority
societies since the Enlightenment. Because they were well educated and adaptable in comparison to other parts
of the population, they often had a decisive role to play in modernisation processes. The Roma/Gypsies,
however, never overcame the threshold of literacy and remained at the margins’ (2012: 53). Ruthers
provocatively compares performative stagings of ‘authentic’ history in Kazimierz, Cracow by non-Jews and at
the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France by non-Roma, by invoking the carnivalesque.
5
This scene has been widely viewed on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K8Hvit4Mms (accessed 5
July 2014).
6
One difference between the two groups is that klezmer music is embedded in the Jewish heritage tourist
industry that romanticises the shtetl (small town) and attracts many Jews. In contrast, there is no Romani
heritage industry; in fact, Roma are often written out of national histories and official state folklore; they are
assumed to be foreign others (Silverman 2014). However, the Council of Europe is developing The Roma Routes
tourist trail of heritage (see www.romaroutes.eu).
7
See www.balkantrafik.com
164 C. Silverman
Today Jews are better integrated into society and the Roma remain frequent targets of
discrimination … Despite all this, their music is joyful and full of life, a sign that the
human spirit cannot be broken. Common allies through their past, united through
their music, a music of emotion and positive energy, that Gypsies and Jews hope
remove a stigma of misery they’ve long been associated with.
In this sweeping statement, Okello managed to equalise Romani and Jewish persecution,
unite them through art, and reduce both Romani and klezmer music to ‘laughter
through tears’—a common trope of Jewish shtetl (small town) humour. According to
her, music will supposedly mitigate oppression: ‘Groups like the Gypsy Kings have
helped change international perceptions of Roma through their guitar music and
flamenco dancing.’ This remains a utopian goal.
8
This and the following quotes are from: ‘Jewish News 1 Channel: Jews and Gypsies tackle discrimination of
Roma community in France’, 1 June 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovvQYjueCPo (accessed 7
July 2014).
9
Feldman (1994) published on probable klezmer/Romani interaction in Romania; more recently he has carried
out research in Moldova and Bessarabia. Strom’s 2005 film deals with Romani/Jewish music interaction in
Carpathia; the Tyachiv Band still plays mixed repertoire from the Carpathian region (see http://beyondkarpaty.
mutiny.net/2010/10/mano-v-nyu-yorku-tyachiv-s-manyo-family-band-visit-new-york-city/ [accessed 10 January
2015]). In addition, Muzsikas (1993) released a CD of pre-holocaust Hungarian Jewish repertoire that was
remembered by Roma who survived, but this interaction was not widespread. My consultants were largely
unaware of these projects. Note that there are performers of Sephardic Balkan music, but they are not part of the
performance complex I describe.
Ethnomusicology Forum 165
Jewish bands in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus, which formed the vast majority of
klezmorim in Eastern Europe, were almost always Jewish family bands. They would
occasionally have non-Jewish members if they didn't have enough family members
or if they needed specialised repertoire.10
However, after I discovered dozens of live acts11 as well as many DJs mixing klezmer
and Balkan, I realised that geographical and historical symbols can be more potent
than maps and actual history.
I refer to Gypsy/klezmer as ‘performance complex … rather than a genre …
emphasising … music making and human action as opposed to categories and
taxonomies’ (Madrid and Moore 2013: 10–11). It is not one style or genre, but rather a
practice of performance, of representation and of discourse. Sometimes klezmer music
alternates with Balkan music, sometimes it is assumed to be one and the same, and
sometimes they are fused. Most of my interviewees agree that the complex started when
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klezmer performers noticed the popularity of Gypsy music, specifically Balkan Beats;
some were captivated by the Gypsy sound; others wished to cash in on its wider youth
appeal.
This performance complex is the part of the ‘New Old Europe Sound’—loud,
energetic, brassy, sweaty, ‘dirty’ (Kaminsky’s introduction, this volume) with a circus-
like feeling and modal melodies on instruments that iconically represent Eastern
Europe, such as clarinet, accordion, trumpet and violin. I note several moves to create
this ‘Sound’. First, conflating of Balkan and Gypsy; this eliminates any music from the
Balkans that is not Gypsy (dozens of genres) and eliminates any Gypsy music that is
not from the Balkans (dozens of genres). Second, conflating Gypsy with brass, which
eliminates many genres. Third, narrowing metres to 2/4 or 4/4, which eliminates
many additive Balkan metres. Fourth, ignoring Sephardic music, which is the Jewish
music of the Balkans. Fifth, crafting a generalised version of klezmer that is tied to no
particular place or time.12
The Amsterdam Klezmer Band (AKB) is one of the most successful groups to
embrace ‘Klezmer, Balkan style’ or ‘typical Yiddish music mix with Balkan, Gypsy
and Russian’ (AKB 2008). With 11 albums and more than 1000 performances since
1997, they label themselves a ‘mini brass band’. Their publicity materials claim:
10
Personal communication, 1 August 2014.
11
A sample of these bands include the Amsterdam Klezmer Band, The Balcony Players (Amsterdam), Trans-
Siberian March Band, The Turbans, She’koyokh (London), L’Orkestina and the Barcelona Gipsy Klezmer
Orchestra (Barcelona), Sholem and Crakow Klazmer Band (Krakow), Miserlou and Knoblauch Klezmer band
(Berlin), Kapelsky (Dortmund), Kbetch (Israel), Balkano (Chicago) and Underscore Orkestra (Portland, OR,
USA). In 2010 a Klezmer/Jewish/Balkan/Gypsy Music Facebook page was created.
12
I focus on the first and fifth moves; the second and third are analysed in Silverman (2013). Simplistic, mistaken
and exoticised assumptions about musical commonalities can be found on the Internet, such as this comment by
Evan Heimlich: ‘Klezmer music of Jewish immigrants overlaps with music of Eastern European Gypsies,
especially in oriental, flatted-seventh chords played on a violin or clarinet.’ http://www.everyculture.com/multi/
Du-Ha/Gypsy-Americans.html#ixzz1NahjhRe. In addition, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett perceptively analysed how
klezmer itself is a constituted ‘heritage’ term and omits many East European Jewish genres (1998). However, the
historic narrowing of Jewish musical genres to klezmer by Jews differs from the recent broadening process of
non-members to create the Gypsy/klezmer complex.
166 C. Silverman
AKB was successful long before the Balkan hype became a worldwide phenomenon.
They suddenly found themselves being sampled and mixed by dance producers, to
their own astonishment. It appeared that the unique sound of the seven band
members was perfect for the popular ‘Balkan Beat’. (http://amsterdamklezmerband.
com/band/biography/ [accessed 30 January 2015])
In 2013 the AKB won a generous two-year Dutch government arts grant, with the
possibility of two more years of funding. Due to their popularity, AKB members are
full-time musicians.
The AKB, like all other groups I interviewed, valorise the idea of mixture, and
define klezmer neither as a musical style nor profession nor repertoire, but rather as
an innovative attitude:13
This omnivorous attitude allows the band to bring out the true essence of klezmer,
that party and wedding music with a tinge of melancholy … played by itinerant
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13
See Waligorska (2013) and Kaminsky (2014, this volume).
14
Quotes related to the AKB are from interviews on 7 December 2013. Note that AKB leader Job Chajes
discovered his Jewish roots in the 1990s; also note that ‘new klezmer’ is a broad term encompassing original
compositions inspired by klezmer.
Ethnomusicology Forum 167
Another group of bands forego loud brass for the more intimate string sounds.
The Balcony Players, for example, moved from klezmer to Gypsy/Balkan when they
busked on the street in the Balkans, met Roma and arranged lessons and jam sessions
with them. The band’s founder, Dutch violinist Moniek de Leeuw, was quite honest
about members’ lack of historical knowledge, stating: ‘It is hard to study about this.
… I’ve heard that klezmorim and Gypsies both travelled around to play weddings,
and even played together. We travel, like them …’ American bassist Martin
Mazikowski added: ‘Klezmer and Gypsy mix really well. There are no big differences
between them’.15
Unlike most groups, the Balcony Players visited Balkan Romani villages, collaborated
with Romani musicians, and were troubled by prejudice against Roma. They donate 50
cents from each album sold to the non-governmental organisation Balkan Sunflowers.
Martin remarked: ‘We hope to reach people who don’t have the image of the bad Gypsy
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… We spread positive stories.’ But concern for Roma was also mixed with romanticism
—Mazikowski said: ‘We want to spread our happy vibe to the Gypsy children in the
villages—they don’t have much but they are so happy! For example, they are so
thankful to be photographed.’
L’Orkestina (Barcelona 1997–2003) was perhaps one of the first European bands to
play a mix of klezmer and Balkan Romani music. They titled their first album Soul of
Europe: Jewish Gypsy (2002). Founder and British accordionist Jon Davison explained
that he discovered Balkan and Romani music in the 1990s and spent years mastering
the styles. He considers himself a ‘purist’, shunning synthesisers, brass and electrifica-
tion. In Barcelona he played with Bulgarians and taught them klezmer. Davison said:
We were playing music from these two communities—so why not put them
together and find something in common? I don’t know if this is true, but some
musicians in Romania play for Roma and for Jews and for everyone else. I was
interested in crossing identities, passing over boundaries, not in fusions.16
The Jewish Gypsy album continues to generate negative YouTube comments to the
present day.17 Some people object to the title while others voice nationalistic and
racist claims. Davison responded to these comments in March 2014:
Just to clarify the title … It's merely an album name, reflecting our repertoire which
came from both traditions in the same part of the world, and putting the two words
together like that is clearly unlikely/impossible in reality. So it's just a concept for
an album, no more, no less.
In May 2013, Davison answered accusations of appropriation about L’Orkestina’s
second album Transylvania Express (2003) with:
The origins of the tunes are all credited … Of the six tunes, there are: one
Romanian, one Jewish, one Gypsy and three Bulgarian … You don't have to be
from a place in order to play music that is traditional …, and we never claimed we
15
Quotes from the Balcony Players are from interviews on 8 December 2013.
16
Quotes from Jon Davison are from an interview on 20 September 2013. Davison did not mention specific
regions of Romania, and he thus generalised Romanian to Balkan.
17
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iUHW2yzErQ (accessed 6 July 2014).
168 C. Silverman
are from all the places we play music from. Anyway, tracks 1, 4 and 9 are all
traditional Bulgarian tunes and three of us are Bulgarian!
The London-based string band The Turbans also works from original recordings,
and pays attention to style, although their repertoire is ‘organic and random’ according
to founder and violinist Darius Thompson.18 Thompson explained why he combines
klezmer and Balkan Gypsy: ‘They have been playing in the same region for hundreds
of years; they have cross-informed each other—both had wedding bands. A lot of the
songs are similar’. On the other hand, he readily admitted: ‘I am not an academic, and
I need to research the scene I’m in … I’ve only been doing this for four years’.
Regardless of technical ability, all of the bands discussed above have recently turned
toward original compositions rather than traditional tunes. Many claim this gives
them freedom of expression to fuse styles. This also frees them from claims of
imitation and appropriation (see below) and solves the problems of copyright.
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Chicago-based clarinettist Bryan Pardo who leads the band Balkano, similarly notes
that he: ‘Grabs bits from Eastern Europe … not tied to any ethnicity. Anything east of
Czechoslovakia and north of Anatolia … it turns out many players are Roma.’19
Balkano’s website stresses Old and New Worlds: ‘Balkano melds the soul of traditional
Klezmer, the energy of Bulgarian wedding music and the melodies of Turkish Roma
music with American rock and jazz. The result is an exciting original blend of the Old
World and the New ….’20 Pardo announces the region of the tunes to audience
members, but says ‘we play in rock clubs, festivals. No one is looking for an education—
they just want to dance.’ For Pardo and many others, entertainment is paramount.
Kapelsky, a group from Dortmund, released an album in 2009 entitled Ostperanto
Folkjazz—Gipsy Swing, Klezmer, East European Folk & Jazz. Their website states: ‘This
is the blend used by four musical vagabonds to chase after the myth of unchained
melancholy. With polka, klezmer and “gypsy” sounds, they explore the Slavic soul deep
into the Orient.’21 The title Ostperanto (East in German + Esperanto) encapsulates the
contradictory strands in the Gypsy/klezmer complex. Esperanto is an invented
language meant to foster peace and multicultural understanding, precisely like this
musical blend. Ostperanto locates the style in the East, yet universalises it.
Symbolic geography further defines the East (or the Balkans) as a vast wild, untamed
area that is outside Europe, at its edge, associated with the past.22 The region
encompasses two ‘exotic Others’—Jews and Roma—and furthermore evokes their
migration, their emotion and their innovation. In the Gypsy/klezmer performance
complex, moreover, Jews and Roma are assumed to have the same emotive qualities:
fiery passion, soul, energy, melancholy and wildness. As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett states:
18
Quotes from Darius Thompson are from an interview on 21 September 2013.
19
Quotes from Bryan Pardo are from an interview on 18 November 2013.
20
See www.balkano.org (accessed 30 January 2015).
21
See www.kapelsky.de (accessed 30 January 2015).
22
Thanks to Joel Rubin, David Kaminsky and Alex Markovic for sharing their interpretations of Ostperanto. See
Todorova (1997) for discussion of the symbolic historic geography of the Balkans.
Ethnomusicology Forum 169
The place is then—a dreamy chronotype of Jewish gypsies, fiddling their way from
place to place, picking up the sounds around them, and fusing them into a zany
foot-tapping musical icon pierced by the soulful cry of a fiddle or clarinet. The
place is not now. (1998: 73)
Gypsy stereotypes perpetuated by the band Gogol Bordello (Jablonsky 2012) and
filmmaker Emir Kusturica add a circus-like, burlesque quality to the Gypsy/klezmer mix.
Band members thus emphasise several themes: Jewish/Romani connections via
migration, persecution, cosmopolitanism, openness and innovation, and the amorph-
ous region of Eastern Europe. Like the Swedish non-Jewish musicians that Kaminsky
(2014, this volume) studied, these Gypsy/klezmer musicians embrace a post-nationalist
stance where music is not glued to the land, but is viewed as ‘universalistic’. This
‘dislocation from particularity’ (Waligorska 2013: 166–7; also see Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett 1998: 72). allows anyone to appropriate the music and its cultural capital,
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regardless of ethnicity.
23
Quotes from Karen Kranenborn are from an interview on 8 December 2013. Similarly. Gruber (2002) and
Slobin (2000) note that audiences respond ecstatically to acoustic klezmer performances.
170 C. Silverman
attention. He soon became the highest paid Balkan Beats DJ in Europe. Shantel also
has a special interest in things Jewish. At a 2011 show in Cologne he remarked to me
that he was one of the few DJs who mixed Jewish music with Balkan Beats; he
claimed this was daring in Germany, with its ambivalent past in relation to Jews.24
The same year he released the album Kosher Nostra: Jewish Gangsters Greatest Hits
(Oz Almog and Shantel 2011), a tribute to vintage Jewish American recordings.
Shantel has marketed himself with a mythical past based on his ancestry. His
grandparents were German Jews from Bucovina, a borderland between Moldova and
Ukraine. He claims that he:
listened to the record collection of my grandfather; this was the first music
inspiration I got; I heard immediately this was not a pure style … I travelled to
Chernowitz, to learn about the multicultural character of the city where German,
Romanian, Ukrainian, Russian, Gypsy, and Jewish musics melded.
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Jean Trouillet of Essay expounds: ‘For Shantel, Bucovina is not a regional brand but it
is an imagination of how at one point in history people were living together.’ This
dismissal of regional specificity allows Shantel to transfer his metaphor of diversity to
the Balkans (which are nowhere near Bucovina) and further claim a connection to
Balkan music. This narrative has bolstered Shantel’s success, although some critics
have been sceptical. Australian music journalist Garth Cartwright writes cynically
that Shantel’s background is largely concocted: ‘sure his mum or grandmum was
from Moldova but that’s like saying my granddad was half Maori and claiming some
kind of faux authority on all things Polynesian.’25
Shantel has capitalised on the current multicultural moment in several ways. First,
he envisions the dance club as a utopian, levelling space where ethnicity does not
matter. The club experience is just about bringing people together: ‘It’s only music,
you know. It’s to make people happy, not to fight against each other’ (Lynskey 2006).
Second, he evokes the inherent cosmopolitanism of Roma and Jews, but embodies it
in himself. In 2010, Jean Trouillet wrote:
Yet he does not see himself as some kind of prophet of multiculturalism. Nor does he
have any aims of creating hippy-dippy, save-the-world music … Shantel sees himself
as a cosmopolitan, a searcher, always on the lookout for new discoveries and new
emotions that he can channel into his own personal music mix. He is the herald of
central European creolisation. (http://www.essayrecordings.com/essay_authentic.
htm [accessed 1 May 2014])
The lyrics to Shantel’s (2009) song ‘Planet Paprika’ reinforce his personal claim to
cosmopolitan hybridity: ‘Do you think I am Russian? Do you suggest Romania? The
truth is I am just exotic & erotic ‘cause I am coming from the Planet Paprika!’ Shantel
claims ersatz heritage, ironically, with an act of Othering, by reducing ethnicity to the
exotic and erotic.
24
This paraphrase and quotes are from interviews with Shantel on 20 March 2011 and Jean Trouilett on 25 April
2011; also see Silverman (2015).
25
See http://www.garthcartwright.com/ (accessed 1 May 2014).
Ethnomusicology Forum 171
discussed above and thus illuminates the gulf between the commercial and scholarly
approaches. In contrast to the bands and DJs in the world music circuit, The Other
Europeans are motivated by educational, cultural, historical and stylistic concerns.
Director Alan Bern, a Jewish American composer and klezmer musician living in
Berlin who has a doctorate in music composition, describes The Other Europeans as
‘an intercultural dialogue: Yiddish and Roma music, culture and identity’ supported
by three organisations: other music e.V. (Germany), the KlezMORE Festival Vienna
(Austria) and the Jewish Culture Festival of Krakow (Poland):
The core activity is to create and present two new bands, one Yiddish and one
Roma … Each band will develop and perform separate repertoires with common
Romanian roots, and … the two bands will collaborate to create a crossover
repertoire and style. Complementing this process, the festivals will also present
symposia, workshops on instrumental music, vocal music, dance and language, and
a film series, all focused on an intercultural understanding of Yiddish and Roma
cultures.26
In a 2012 documentary about the project entitled Broken Sound, Bern states: ‘The
idea is to find the real distance between the Yiddish and the Roma style so we can
actually understand how to put them together’.27 Thus The Other Europeans is not a
‘fusion band’ based on presumed connections between Jewish and Romani music.
Instead, it faced considerable hurdles trying to precisely locate specific musical
connections between Jews and Roma. The musicians decided to focus on Bessarabia,
where at least some documentation demonstrates that Roma and Jews interacted in
professional musical roles. They further narrowed down to the 1920s, the pre-World
War II decade when Jews were still present in numbers and before Bessarabian
klezmer style had been influenced by the jazz and pop elements of American klezmer.
Reliable information was still very hard to find, in part due to the decimation of the
26
These quotes and information are found online: http://www.other-europeans-band.eu/archiv_the-other-
europeans/project.htm (accessed 7 July 2014).
27
See http://www.1meter60-shop.de/index.php?route=product/film&product_id=50
172 C. Silverman
Holocaust, but Bern laboured on to excavate older layers of klezmer music via
archives and older performers.
Unlike Jewish music, Romani music was still alive in Bessarabia—and two key
musicians in the project were from Moldova. Of course this music had changed
considerably since the 1920s, thus presenting a different kind of challenge. Unlike
1920s Jewish music, which was preserved on a few rare recordings, no recordings
existed of 1920s Romani music. In other words, the problems that the Other
Europeans faced highlight exactly what the Gypsy/klezmer performance complex
otherwise ignores; that is, the difficulty of locating particular styles from specific
historical periods and geographical locations.
Another difference is that The Other Europeans eschew the exotic Othering
approach that many Gypsy/klezmer performers embrace. In Broken Sound Bern
remarks: ‘In commercial world music, there is a lot of bullshit about Jews and
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Gypsies, because to West Europeans, the Jews are exotic and the Gypsies are exotic.’
He writes on the project website:
Precisely the complex interculturality of Roma and Jewish cultures provoked
nationalist chauvinist ideologies in the past to condemn them as ‘rootless,’
‘parasitic,’ ‘degenerate,’ and worse. Such attitudes are by no means relics of the
past; they are visible throughout Europe today in recurring anti-Semitic and anti-
Roma outbursts. In contrast, the same transcultural character of Yiddish and Roma
music is romanticized and embraced by contemporary ‘world music’ pop culture,
which frames it as subversive and transgressive and therefore ‘hip.’ Currently there
is a popular wave of Roma and pseudo-Roma music and a similar wave of post-
klezmer-inspired New Jewish Music. There are both imaginary affinities between
them as well as genuine historical and musical contact.
Bern thus rejects the simplistic analogy between Jews and Roma as itinerants that
Gypsy/klezmer performers invoke. Instead he paints a more nuanced picture of Jews
and Roma specifically in Bessarabia as transcultural actors who transmitted musical
knowledge, some of which was shared. Furthermore, he criticises the current
romanticisation of the transcultural (and I would add the hybrid, see below) in
world music discourse, instead insisting on genuine history. Finally, The Other
Europeans project approaches politics in a more engaged way than other Gypsy/
klezmer performers. Bern constantly invokes historical and contemporary discrim-
ination, and American klezmer musician Mark Rubin, interviewed in Broken Sound,
remarks that although music can remove politics and stigma, this is ‘more than music
we are talking about’.
With generous funding from the European Commission, The Other Europeans
sponsored an opening conference/symposium and several tours from 2007 to 2010. In
2009 the CD Splendor was released with extensive liner notes, but recently the project
appears dormant. With a roster of 14 musicians, perhaps it is too expensive to
support; or by being historical, it is too educational for the world music market; or
perhaps, with virtuosic strings and reeds as well as brass, it deviates too much from
the New Old Europe dirty brass sound. It certainty shies away from the romantic
Ethnomusicology Forum 173
itinerancy also make Jews as ‘just exotic enough’ (Kaminsky 2014) to be granted
affinity with Roma as local Others.
Precisely the outsider status of these two groups makes them a valuable ‘authentic’
marketing commodity. In the 1990s, new concepts of globalisation emerged that
produced a heightened consumption of difference. Taylor observed that ‘Everything is
for sale, everything is appropriable in the name of making one’s identity—or music …’
(2007: 118). The global multiculturalism of the 1990s went hand in hand with that
consumption of difference. Globalisation ‘fosters a new way of taming difference in
order to commodify it’ and distribute it via new technologies (Taylor 2007: 126).
In its newest incarnation, world music embraces hybridity as its primary trope,
‘sometimes displacing lenses of authenticity’ (Taylor 2007: 141). In an ironic twist,
the hybrid becomes a mark of authenticity, even tradition. According to Taylor, there
has been a shift from ‘authenticity-as-pure to authenticity-as-hybrid’; now, world
musicians are expected to be hybrid, which ‘allows them to be constructed as
authentic’ (2007: 143–4). The Gypsy/klezmer performance complex exemplifies this
trend, illustrated by the long list of generic tags performers use and the valorisation of
mixed styles. Performers invoke Roma and Jews as historic hybrids, and in so doing
reap the benefit of double validation.
Historically, both Romani and Jewish musical creativity grew from their multiple re-
diasporisations (sometimes forced), their openness to adopt multiple non-local styles
and their outsider status. Hybridity did not emerge from desire to claim ‘authenticity.’
Rather, the professional marginal musician needed to be a hybrid to survive. Multiple
patrons required multiple musical repertoires, and marginality necessitated border
crossings. Most significantly, Jews and Roma have had very different outsider
trajectories despite having marginality and Holocaust decimation in common; nor
could their histories of integration be more divergent. Today Roma remain the least
integrated European ethnic group whereas Jews are generally highly integrated.
All my consultants viewed hybridity as liberating and promoting tolerance. But
Hutnyk (2000) reminds us that hybridity is above all a marketing label used by world
music promoters. Bringing the musics of marginal peoples into the mainstream may
174 C. Silverman
provide visibility and even hard cash for formerly impoverished performers, but only if
they have fair contracts (which are rare). The valorisation of hybridity rarely alters the
structures of inequality. Overall prejudices against Roma and Jews have not changed,
and the appropriation of their music needs to be seen in this light.
Appropriation has been in the news a great deal lately, related to controversies over
Victoria Secret’s use of Native American headdresses28 and Miley Cyrus’ twerking.29
The usual argument defending musical appropriation is that music can and should
never be owned by one group; its global flow enriches creativity and spurs innovation,
creating a win–win situation for everyone. My non-Jewish non-Romani consultants
all held this position. Bryan Pardo of Balkano expressed his views strongly:
It would be sad, sad world if there were some sort of ethnic cultural police who said
‘you are a poor white guy in Kansas—you should only play Kansas music …’ If you
love music, why can’t you play it, listen to it? It is not appropriation any more than
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28
See https://zap2it.com/blogs/victorias_secret_apologizes_removes_native_american_headdress_from_fashion_show_
broadcast-2012-11 (accessed 17 June 2014).
29
See Theriault (2013). In response to a Salon article entitled ‘Why I Can’t Stand White Belly dancers’, a
Washington Post article was titled ‘What Would Salon Think of an Article Called Why I Can’t Stand Asian
Musicians who play Beethoven.’ See: http://www.salon.com/2014/03/04/why_i_cant_stand_white_belly_dancers/;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/03/06/what-would-salon-think-of-an-article-
called-why-i-cant-stand-asian-musicians-who-play-beethoven/ (accessed 10 May 2014).
30
For an insightful popular blog on this topic, see Uwujaren (2013).
Ethnomusicology Forum 175
‘overstate the relative cultural power of these musics’ (2000: 27) to effect change.
Celebratory narratives espouse a ‘democratic vision for world music’ (Feld 2000: 167),
which then becomes part of the marketing scheme. When audiences observe the
incredible diversity of music available, they see it ‘as some kind of sign that
democracy prevails, that every voice can be heard, every style can be purchased,
everything will be available to everybody’ (Feld 2000: 167). But, in celebrating
diversity, we should not confuse the flow of musical contents with the flow of power
relations (Feld 1994: 263). Often too much attention is paid to the sound aspect of
hybrid musics and not enough to the social, political and economic relationships that
produce them. A narrow aesthetic analysis ignores ‘who is doing the hybridity, from
which position and with what intention and result’ (Born and Hesmondhalgh
2000: 19).
Many performers in the celebratory camp assert that appropriation is not
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Jewish history and current politics. She applauds how ‘Klezmer contributes to the
Jewish/non-Jewish dialogue, offering a new mode of encounter, which enables non-
Jews … to participate in Jewish culture’ (Waligorska 2013: 273). She further claims
these musical spaces open up a dialogue between Jews and non-Jews.
Waligorska pays far less attention to economics and profit than to art or identity.
She can do this comfortably because both Jews and non-Jews playing klezmer are, in
general, fairly secure economically. This is not the case with Roma. Not only are
Roma overwhelmingly poor, but many also experience discrimination and forced
migration. By contrast, the Gypsy music industry (mostly run by non-Roma) is
hugely profitable, with Shantel earning over €2000 and Goran Bregović over €20,000
per show. There are also many more Romani musicians than Jewish musicians
struggling for work; this amplifies my point that the European problem with Roma is
that there are too many of them, whereas the problem with Jews is that there are
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too few.
When I suggested to my consultants that non-Roma might be taking work away
from Roma, they vehemently disagreed, saying that they are helping audiences grow;
they explained that since they credit their sources, everyone benefits. For example,
Pardo said:
We never hide the fact that we cover a song—it is pure admiration for Roma. It is
absolutely impossible that we are taking work away from Balkan musicians like
Selim Sesler [Turkish clarinettist]. I buy his CD, I go to his shows, we even opened
for him. We are in a glorious moment—you can buy his CDs, but you have to
know he exists. People like me … go after the sources. I have bought dozens of
albums and gone to dozens of shows. I don’t know how else to contribute to them.
It is a weird bar you are posing. (Interview, 18 November 2013)
Pardo further elaborated: ‘I don’t think in these socioeconomic terms. I think of this
as cool music.’
Most non-Romani bands and DJs playing Gypsy music focus solely on the music
and neither fully examine stereotypes, politics nor economic hierarchies. More often
these groups reproduce stereotypes and foster the production of ‘the fantasy Gypsy’.
Performers may even position themselves as the virtual Gypsies via costuming and
staging. Karen Kranenborn notes:
Balkan bands do reinforce stereotypes—they go barefoot, they dress up like Gypsies
[long wide layered skirts]; audience members dress up too …. I shopped for shirts
for RaRomski that were the opposite, not circus style, but urban Gypsy—slick and
shiny.31
Klezmer bands also trade in stereotypes—Waligorska (2013) and Gruber (2002: 227)
document shtetl costuming and fake accents, and Tkachenko (2013: 108) reports
klezmer bands in Gypsy attire.
31
Alex Krebs, who leads a Gypsy brass band in Portland, OR, USA, added a Balkan suffix to his name, wore fake
gold teeth and sold them at intermission. In contrast, some bands (especially those that have some Romani
members, such as Slavic Soul Party and Zlatne Uste in New York City and Yale Strom’s Hot Pstromi in San
Diego) have dealt seriously with issues of representation and have actively resisted stereotypes.
Ethnomusicology Forum 177
Waligorska’s claim that German and Polish klezmer opens up a space of dialogue
between Jews and non-Jews is not borne out in the Gypsy/klezmer complex. My
consultants rarely bought up real Jews and Roma. They did not mention contexts,
communities, economics or politics, with the exception that some bands occasionally
played for Jewish events. In our discussions, actual Roma were absent more than
actual Jews, reflecting their contrasting historical positions. History, even the
Holocaust, rarely came up. Most musicians were completely unaware of Romani
communities in their cities and did not follow the news about xenophobia and
deportations. Many performers said they actively resisted getting involved in politics.
However, they did participate in performances under the rubric of multiculturalism,
and so benefitted from being associated with Jews and Roma. They strategically
claimed to be apolitical but then asserted multicultural politics when it legitimised
their music and helped get them work.
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Conclusion
Gypsy and Jewish musics accomplish significant discursive work in the current
European political climate which is multiculturalist but also increasingly xenophobic.
Whereas Jews are ‘absent Others’ who are ‘historically present’, Roma are ‘too present
Others’ who are ‘historically absent’—yet over-determined in the realm of music. In
the multiculturalist imaginary Roma and Jews loom large, representing a kind of
diversity that can easily be made toothless via superficial staged ethnic stereotyping.
Ironically, as audiences grow for Gypsy/klezmer music, more performers are neither
Jewish nor Romani. Musicians valorise sharing, borrowing and blending, and
celebrate the flow of musical styles; yet they rarely recognise power imbalances and
economic hierarchies.
By uniting Gypsy and klezmer in one broad geographical sweep of Balkans and
Eastern Europe (which are often conflated), performers can erase the specificities of
32
Balkan Romani strategies for dealing with marginalisation are discussed in Silverman (2012). The issue of
appropriation of Romani music is the subject of research in progress (see Silverman 2013, 2015).
178 C. Silverman
region, style, history and ethnicity. Moreover, once the music is detached from
ethnicity it can be played by anyone and re-blended with anything without losing its
essence of Gypsy/klezmerness. So a double erasure ensues for Roma and Jews: not
only is their music no longer stylistically distinctive, but also they themselves are no
longer necessary as performers.
This work not only creates cultural capital for European musicians, but also
validates appropriation. The double Othering grants double authenticity and a double
validation of multiculturalism, reinforced via audience belief that they are somehow
helping marginalised groups (although this rarely translates into action). The
invocation of hybridity also adds to authenticity; not only is the Gypsy/klezmer
blend hybrid, but both Jews and Roma are each hybrids. To cap it off, the claim to
hybridity as well as to migration and innovation in klezmer and Gypsy musics serves
as a justification for appropriation by non-Jews and non-Roma. In the future, as this
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complex migrates transnationally (it has already reached Mexico, Japan, and
Australia) it will be interesting to follow its manifestations.
Acknowledgements
Research was supported by the Guggenheim Foundation and the University of
Oregon Office for Research. Fieldwork 2011–2013 took place in Western Europe
(Germany, Austria, England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal) and North America
(New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, OR, Seattle and
Vancouver, BC), buttressed by 30 years of prior fieldwork in the Balkans. Performers
specifically interviewed for this article include DJ Shantel (Frankfurt), DJ Malaka
(London) and DJ Tommi (Amsterdam); and members of the AKB, RaRomski, Ot
Azoy and The Balcony Players (all based in Amsterdam), Trans-Siberian March
Band, The Turbans, Gypsy Fever and Tatcho Drom (all based in London),
L’Orkestina (Barcelona) and Balkano (Chicago).
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