A story about Henry Sapoznik, artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has become a classic, appearing in many accounts of the modern revival of klezmer, the folk music of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jewry.
It happened in 1977 when Sapoznik, a banjo player, was studying American old time music in North Carolina.
One of his teachers, Tommy Jarrell, whom Sapoznik called his “hillbilly zayde [grandfather],” was puzzled by this young Jewish folk musician’s interest in Appalachian music, and finally asked him, “Hank, don’t your people got none of your own music?”
Unfortunately, Jarrell died soon after, so “I never did tell him that he was the godfather” of the revival of klezmer, Sapoznik said in a telephone interview from Madison. “I don’t know what he would have done with that information.”
What’s important is what Sapoznik did to answer the question. This son of Holocaust survivors who initially wanted to get away from Jewish music plunged into investigation and performance of klezmer, becoming one of the pioneers of the revival.
Today, he continues to be a leading figure in the klezmer scene — performer, recording artist, author (“Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World”), founder and director of the annual KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program, and teacher.
This winter and spring, he will be doing two things in Madison:
First, he is teaching a semester-long class that began last week on “Yiddish-American Popular Culture 1890-1950,” an interdisciplinary course listed with the school’s departments of music, theater and folklore, as well as Jewish studies.
“It really shows how wide-ranging Yiddish culture has been, touching all these intellectual pursuits and having a powerful influence on them,” Saposnik said.
Second, on April 18-20, he is presenting to the general public for the first time in Wisconsin the “KlezKamp Road Show,” what he called “a modified, traveling version” of the KlezKamp that has taken place in a Catskills resort for what will be 25 years this December.
“It has all the basic elements of the standard KlezKamp,” Saposnik said, including workshops on klezmer music, Yiddish folk songs, crafts, Yiddish literature and dance.
It also will include concerts featuring national and local performers, including Sapoznik’s trio the Youngers of Zion and Madison jazz musician and Jews-in-American-popular-music authority Ben Sidran.
No longer news
During the early years of the revival, especially the early 1980s, it made news in the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. The Wall Street Journal, among other general publications, took note of it; and it attracted classical musicians like Israel-born violinist Itzhak Perlman and jazz musicians like John Zorn.
Today, it doesn’t make news, and “the fact that you’re not hearing about it means it has achieved a place of recognizable normalcy” in Jewish and American culture, said Sapoznik. “You say ‘klezmer’ and no one raises their eyebrows.” One can even find the word in standard English dictionaries, he said.
But that doesn’t mean it has not remained popular or is not still developing. Sapoznik said more than 500 people participated in last December’s KlezKamp, with more than 60 percent of them never having been there before.
“When I started in the mid-1970s, I knew everybody [in the scene], all 12 of us. I can’t tell you how many hundreds of bands there are now,” he said.
Moreover, “I’ve been working with a new generation of young players who have emerged, come to KlezKamp as children and students and become colleagues and friends,” he said.
The revival also has become international. In fact, outside of the United States, “the center is in Germany. There is an overabundance of irony in that,” he said.
The revival has also led to blends — klezmer-plus-jazz, klezmer-plus-bluegrass. But while noting such developments, Sapoznik said he doesn’t find such musical blends interesting to play himself.
“I’m always into the grass roots music … I love the straight-ahead music,” he said. “It is what I played 30 years ago and what I will be playing 30 years from now.”
Sapoznik’s residency is made possible through collaboration with UW-Madison’s Arts Institute, Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies and its Conney Project on Jewish Arts, School of Music, Folklore Program and Department of Theater and Drama.
For more information about the Madison events, call 608-265-4763 or visit www.arts.wisc.edu/artsinstitute/IAR/sapoznik/.
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