The Crowd Keeps The Music Playing

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by Paul Bass | Jun 14, 2006 11:49 pm

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Posted to: Arts

p(clear). Fans came onstage with umbrellas to keep klezmer mavens like bassist Nicki Parrott (pictured) dry and a sizzling, Old World-meets-New performance going at Arts & Ideas Wednesday night. It made for a memorable festival moment at a memorable concert.

David Krakeur’s Klezmer Madness put on the concert in Yale’s Branford College courtyard. Early into the concert a drizzle started. Bandleader Krakauer appeared ready to pack up; then he invited audience members with umbrellas onstage. They managed to keep band members dry while bopping to the irresistible beats of the music. The drizzle, unlike the music, petered out before ever gaining force. The umbrellas disappeared, and the band played on.

p(clear). Klezmer has always been an Old World-Meets-New music, ever since Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe brought it to New York during the great late 19th century, early 20th century migration. They merged their traditional, celebratory minor-key melodies with the rhythmic and improvisational innovations of jazz. They gradually plugged in their instruments, too. Today the klezmer and jazz scenes are fully intermarried and crosspollinated. Krakauer’s ensemble continues that tradition of genre merging. His clarinet playing stays within the traditional scales and tones of klezmer. Along with the accordion, the clarinet grounds the music in its roots, while the rest of the band dips in and out of not just jazz, but way beyond.

p(clear). Guitarist Cheryl Bailey’s (pictured) dizzyingly fast fingers skipped Wednesday night from jazz to klezmer riffs, from distortion-heavy hard rock leads to funk and bop, with the occasional power chord smashed in. Dancing across the stage, bassist Parrott also laid down funk beats, rock progressions, and a half high-on-the-neck melodic, half lower-range heavy-beat solo to die for. The experimentation added range and variety to the customary klezmer concert, enabling the musicians to lift the audience to crescendoes and then land us gently into interludes.

p(clear). The genre-bending entered new galaxies when “Socalled” (pictured) joined the band to add hip-hop samples and Yiddish rap. It all worked; it all sounded like klezmer, familiar in its basic musical message, and faithful to the spirit in its modern roaming.

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