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When I was child in Buenos Aires, in the family celebrations we used to dance and sing a lot, we could hear the old men of the family «speak politics» in Yiddish, so that we, the children, could not understand. Then I became a teenager, the old men were too old; no more dance, no more Yiddish. We spoke a lot of politics, but in Spanish! Some twenty years later, already a musician, I asked myself: which is my folk music the one that transcends me, the one that speaks about my origins, about my ancestry? And there it was, the music of my childhood, this music of the Jews of Eastern Europe we call today ‘Klezmer’. And I started to hear it, play it, know it.
And one day I asked myself another question: what would the Jewish music have become if the Shoa — the Holocaust — had not taken place? Futile question, but nevertheless relevant for a Jewish musician. This music was the sonic landscape of the marriages, Bar Mitzvah, funerals of the 6 million Jews that disappear in smoke. This music is their echo, the echo of their laughter and their tears, their kisses and their quarrels. This music would have changed, as they also would have changed. Nowadays they would watch TV, like us, they would go in bars, like us, their music would mix with other musics.
But that did not arrive. They died and this music remained frozen. We play it again today, to do what? To speak only about what we were? Of what we could have been? Me, I want to sing what we are, we are jazz, we are rock’n’roll, we are ski and Internet, red wine and barbecue. And Jews. And I would like to make my small contribution so that this music arrives at the 21st century to sing 21st century stories, mine, yours, ours.
This CD recorded in concert is basically a disc of contemporary jazz, each song has an important amount of improvisation, the solos follow one another, there are moments of collective impro also… and it is at the same time a disc of Jewish music, first of all because it is music composed by a Jewish composer, as secular as I can be, and because the melodies are inhabited by ‘dibukk’, spirits that sailed away in the empty pockets of my grandparents from Odessa, Kishinev, Dubossar…
Damian Nisenson [iv-08]
notice@mam_008-0001
Also available in digital format (MP3, etc.) at your favourite online store.