Back around 1982, I was walking along the southern edge of Central Park when I heard the strains of an unusual music. Investigating, I came upon an outdoor performance by a wonderful band, The Klezmorim. This was my first real exposure to klezmer and I was pretty thrilled, soon locating records by this band and a handful of others. For several years, I’d mention it to friends who tended to look at me quizzically, especially those raised Jewish who couldn’t understand why on earth I’d be interested in music they spent much of their childhood trying to avoid! By the late '80s, klezmer had begun to infiltrate the downtown scene and before you knew it, everyone was dipping their toes. Initially, this was pretty exciting as one, in the fashion of the times, got to hear klezmer welded with various other forms to generate (apparently) new and vital musics. So we got punk-klezmer, 12-tone-klezmer, free jazz-klezmer, faux klezmer-klezmer, etc. ad nauseum. Inevitably, my interest palled and I began to only be interested, if at all, to hear the music as practiced by musicians for whom it actually had deep meaning, not by dilettantes eager to hitch their wagons to the next new thing, however transitory. I hadn’t heard anything in this vein for several years.
All this to explain my reaction to Zakarya’s new disc, Something Obvious. An instrumental quartet led by accordionist Yves Weyh (backed by guitar, bass and drums), Zakarya essentially attacks the form from a rockish standpoint, one particularly informed by a prog rock take on things; one track sounds almost like a take on “Lark’s Tongue” era King Crimson. I guess they’re very good and, as near as I can tell, they’d probably be quite popular given the right exposure. They’re certainly tight, the accordion has a strength and presence that easily puts it on an equal level to the guitar, the tunes rock and careen with a certain amount of vigor. But to what end? It smacks of the hyper-professionalism that’s taken over most of the John Zorn-dominated scene, including his own Masada and its offshoots. There’s more than a whiff of fusionoid tendencies in both the mechanical forms and the lack of real risk taking. Each piece is jewel-like in its precision but also in its coldness. The melodies are solid but lack the warmth and generosity of, say, Guy Klucevsek when he enters this territory, much less that of an actual klezmer band performing the music in a setting where it truly has deep meaning. It’s a music that lends itself to humor but here the humor becomes perfunctory and a little bit sneering.
While it’s a step and a half down from Frank London’s work (for my money, probably the best that came out of the downtown scene), on its own terms the disc succeeds. Each track holds together well and there’s really not a boring one to be found. The couple of pieces around a minute long rage and strut in a manner that recalls early Naked City and I suppose fans of that band will pretty much enjoy this one. It’s just that, by this point in time (as it would be with Naked City, I imagine, were they to re-emerge), there’s just enough of a tinge of sterility and archness to cause my reaction to be, “Why bother?” Give me the real stuff. Where are The Klezmorim when I need them?
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