The Klezmatics: There's Out, And Then There's Out

The official CD-release party for the Klezmatics' Possessed (Xenophile) took place a few weeks ago. Not in a synagogue social hall, but at the Knitting Factory, the veritable temple of New York's downtown avant-garde. And instead of a Hadassah lady, the MC was a bearded lady accompanied by some fire-swallowing cross-dressing acrobats from the Lower East Side's radical Circus Amok.

So, nu, what gives?

The answer can be found in large part on Possessed, the Klezmatics' provocative fourth and most accomplished album. The disc's 18 tracks include traditional and original compositions drawing upon klezmer tradition while expanding on it in ways the Old World klezmorim might never have dreamed of but probably would have appreciated.

"We gave ourselves a job years ago, and it is to walk the line of never getting too far away from the Jewish klezmer tradition but never just slavishly copying and reproducing either," says trumpeter/composer Frank London, speaking by phone from his New York apartment the morning after a slivovitz-plum-brandy-soaked Passover seder. "The way we define ourselves is that we are traditional because we are in the tradition, but we are always being ourselves."

Being themselves, says London, means being "out" -- most obviously by acknowledging the Jewishness of what they do (though not all the musicians are Jewish). He explains, "For years many of the klezmer bands hid behind the word `klezmer' as a way of avoiding the `Jewish' word." The sextet is also "out" as a gay group -- two of its members openly identify themselves that way. "Even less of the band is gay than is Jewish, but that doesn't make a difference," says London, who is married and has a son. "The point is, that is who the individuals in the band are, and therefore it's a part of what we as a band are."

The group's "outness," he adds, was a factor in their recent creative alliance with playwright Tony Kushner of Angels in America fame. Possessed includes a 20-minute song cycle written for Kushner's A Dybbuk: Between Two Worlds (a dybbuk is a Jewish ghost), as well as Kushner-penned liner notes. "I think what interested Tony besides our music is the pride and joy. We come from this ecstatic standpoint on Jewishness. We're very out, yet in a totally joyous, non-dogmatic way, which is beautiful because it's very reflective of the music itself."

What is most "out" about the Klezmatics ultimately is the music. Although heavily steeped in the instrumental tradition of Eastern European Jewry and Yiddish folk (with a front line of clarinet, accordion, and trumpet providing infinite variations), the Klezmatics aren't trapped inside a musical shtetl. On Possessed, freylekhs and bulgars (traditional dances) rub up against the cartoonish, Raymond-Scott-meets-Frank-Zappa polyphonic high jinks of London's "Beggars' Dance." Members of Canadian pop group Moxy Fruvous lend their vocals to "Shprayz Ikh Mir," a traditional drinking song. John Medeski, of Medeski Martin and Wood, contributes Hammond organ to several cuts, including "Reefer Song," a spacy, swirling ballad with a Yiddish chorus ("Reykher a splif -- kanabis") that needs no translation.

If all rock music were klezmer, then Phish would probably be the Klezmatics. Or vice versa. (In either case, Phish would no longer suck.) At the Knitting Factory concert, the Klezmatics stretched out even farther than on Possessed, using their well-honed jazz chops to investigate the rich improvisational potential of the melodies. The audience responded with the enthusiasm and cultural pride of Irish-Americans at a Pogues concert on St. Patrick's Day. For a few hours at least, everyone was gay, everyone was Jewish, and it was very hip to be both.

-- Seth Rogovoy

(The Klezmatics perform at Johnny D's in Somerville this Friday, May 16. Call 776-2004.)