Email this article | Printer friendly page The New Orleans Klezmer All StarsBy Alex Oliver |
Historically, every musical style was born of a variety of influences. The genius in creating a new sound is incorporating aspects of seemingly disparate music styles into a new form. That genius has always been a definitive characteristic of klezmer music, and one the New Orleans Klezmer All Stars carry on today. Nevertheless, NOKAS are not staunch traditionalists -- the band recognizes the importance, even necessity, of absorbing local styles into their unique style of klezmer and have found, in New Orleans, a wealth of material to draw on.
Klezmer music developed in Eastern Europe in the 1800s as accompaniment to Jewish celebrations, but the itinerant nature of the klezmer bands at the time provided constant regional influences to their ever-evolving sound. While it may seem strange that one of the NOKAS's early drummers was Willie "Mean Willie" Green, Neville Brothers member and top on the list of New Orleans funk drummers, his place in the band was a logical evolution of klezmer music.
"One thing about the way this band came together -- something that probably couldn't have happened elsewhere -- is that it evolved from playing live," explains saxophonist and clarinetist Robert Wagner of the bands' beginnings. "A lot of times when people put together bands, a klezmer band, a swing band or whatever, they research it and try to be an authentic version of something. We evolved from musicians taking an interest in the music and wanting to be involved. The band is its own entity, like its own school of klezmer."
The band was founded, albeit loosely at the time, in 1991 at a pick-up jazz gig guitarist Jonathan Freilich, bassist Arthur Kastler and former clarinetist Ben Schenk landed at Kaldi's Coffeehouse. The three met while playing together in jazz trumpeter Kermit Ruffins' jam sessions, and soon other musicians in town were sitting in at the Kaldi's sets, including NOKAS accordion player Glenn Hartman and saxophonist Ben Ellman.
"We starting playing a little thing at Kaldi's where we played all kinds of stuff," Freilich remembers. "We did three klezmer tunes initially, and those were turning out to be the most fun to play. Glenn showed up, and a lot of other people who were interested in doing it showed up. Our first gigs were weddings, about six years ago. The first shows were fried chicken affairs -- I'd never been to Jewish functions with fried chicken before, that was a whole new scenario."
Hartman and Freilich have a long-running interest in klezmer music. Hartman wrote his thesis on klezmer music for an MFA Tulane Univsersity, while Freilich's interest in klezmer music came at an early age.
"When I was a kid I used to spend a lot of time with my grandparents, and my grandfather listened to a lot of klezmer music," says Freilich. "He lived in Philadelphia, and when he was young, that was the center of American klezmer music. When I started playing, when I was about sixteen, I didn't think at all about playing klezmer music, I was more interested in Leadbelly and the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan. After being involved a lot in the blues and trying to empathize and understand that, I began to understand folk expression and what that really means. So the combination of that and my childhood memories of klezmer music made it really easy to start playing it."
Later enlistees to the NOKAS, however, were not as versed in the music. But if anything, this proved beneficial since these musicians enjoyed the challenge of playing klezmer music.
"I'd never heard Klezmer music before I joined the band," Wagner says. "My interest was that it's very attractive music for horns. Most gigs you play as a horn player you aren't able to take as melodic a role as I can here. I came down [to New Orleans] and was predominantly playing jazz, and I met Jonathan from playing in different bands around town, and he said, 'Come play clarinet in my klezmer band.' The music is so melodically expressive, and you're able to really write parts for people in this band, which is really rare. So as a horn player, you're playing the melodies, very beautiful melodies, and there is a lot of improvisation going on. For me, it was purely musical."
"The music itself is so hard to play," Ellman explains. "It's extremely challenging to play, and that's one of the reasons I love playing in the band so much. It's pushed me to learn a lot of new music. Everyone in that band is such a good player, and everyone has all these different styles, but we can all play klezmer music together. Not only am I learning from playing a folk music that has very distinctive sounds, distinctive ornaments, distinctive decorations, that make it unique, but you're also getting the uniqueness of every player in the band."
It was early on in the band's history when the members realized their interpretation of klezmer music didn't fit that of all players. Even now, some fans find the NOKAS style of klezmer a bit too loud.
"There were some people who wanted to play with us who showed up and had a specific idea about what klezmer music should sound like and wanted to play it that way," explains Freilich. "One of the issues was that we wanted to play loud. You want yourself to be heard, and if you don't have that urge in a group, you'll just wither away. Volume is a reality in music. A lot of people will say music doesn't have to be loud, which is true sometimes, but loudness also expresses something."
"We played in Santa Monica recently at a Jewish Community Center," Hartman continues. "We finished the first number, this really burning number, and we stopped and the crowd immediately started yelling, 'It's too loud.' No applause or anything, just, 'Turn it down.'"
Locally, and at most road gigs, the audience response is the exact opposite. At the last three New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festivals, the NOKAS haven't failed to fill the tents they have played and instill the requisite energy into their hora-dancing crowds. The energy of the band has always been one of their strongest aspects, from their first big gig at Tip's. At a Christmas party, no less.
"Our music crosses a lot of boundaries, but our appeal does, too. It's hard to say exactly who our audience is. We could play for the hippie crowd and people will dig it for the groove and for dancing, then we can play for an old Jewish crowd and they'll think it's nice to hear the music," Wagner says.
"What I remember as being really staggering early on is, we had a Tipitina's gig and a hell of a lot of people came out, and wigged out and danced like crazy. At the time we were all very young so it was kind of a big deal to have a gig at Tipitina's," says Freilich. "There were all these people. I don't know where they came from. All we were doing was laughing our asses off, first because they showed up, second because we had this show, and third because they just kept freaking out, and we didn't really take ourselves that seriously at that point. In fact, I don't think we did until about a month ago [laughs]."
"I think I still have that reaction to the band," Hartman explains. "We're playing this type of music that was set up for no other reason than for kicks. We started doing it because we thought it was funny, almost. So to see people enjoying it -- even now -- it's like, 'Why do you like this? Why are you here?'"
It isn't difficult to understand why people unfamiliar with the NOKAS find it strange for the band to flourish as they do in the party atmosphere of New Orleans. Probably the most distinctive sounds of klezmer are the wailing, mournful clarinets and violins. But when taken as a whole and not just the sum of these prominent parts, klezmer music, especially that of the NOKAS, is exciting, lively, and perfect party music.
"Some type of linear traditional thing doesn't strike you as something you'd expect modern people to come out and lose their heads to," Freilich points out. "The gigs got bigger and bigger, and we started getting more establishment-type gigs, and we'd be up on stage belly laughing the whole time, thinking, 'This is the silliest thing of all time.' One of the characteristics of the band is that all the members bicker and make fun of each other all day, and that goes on a lot on stage. We have one of the least-serious stage personas of any band I know."
"I think people are really into it, in the way we do the music," continues Hartman. "If you search the Internet for us, you'll read quotes like, 'I don't know if it's really klezmer, but this is the best klezmer bar band in America.' We might be the only 'klezmer bar band' in America. You can't deny the energy, and that's something that's authentic to the music. That's something we hear a lot from old people, they'll tell us we have the energy of real klezmer bands."
"It just sounds twisted to me, a lot of the time," says Ellman. "The melodies are really exciting and in a way listening to klezmer is like listening to blues, it's so expressive. Someone might be a virtuoso on their instrument or not, but it all has such feeling to it. It can be really sad and expressive, or really happy and joyous."
The band members of the NOKAS all agree New Orleans is a unique city, and that the local music scene was instrumental in the development of both the band and its members. Interestingly, of the regular players in the NOKAS, only Kastler is from New Orleans, and now lives in Athens, Georgia.
"Rob's from East Lansing, Michigan," Freilich explains. "Glenn's from Long Beach. Ben Ellman is from Los Angeles. I'm from England, but grew up in California, which is where I met Ben Ellman. We don't know where Rick [Perles, the NOKAS violinist] is from, but he's lived here for a while. He's a lawyer here."
"Rick paid his way through law school playing violin on Bourbon Street, in a country western bar," says Hartman.
Currently the band use about four different drummers, among them Stanton Moore of Galactic, Kevin O'Day of Royal Fingerbowl and Green of the Neville Brothers. Beyond that, the regular players in the NOKAS had or have gigs in various local bands. Saxophonist Ben Ellman is currently touring with Galactic, Hartman ended a stint as keyboardist for Anders Osborne not long ago, Freilich plays in his free jazz band Naked on the Floor as well as Mas Mamones and Michael Ray and the Cosmic Krewe, and Wagner is a member of Iris May Tango, Mas Mamones, and a number of other local bands. This involvement in so many different bands, and of such different styles, is characteristic of the local music scene, and the benefits are great -- rather than all bands becoming homogenized, there is a huge amount of cross-pollination, so while bands maintain their own unique sound, they incorporate styles from other bands.
"These guys [Freilich and Hartman] started playing a type of music that other musicians took interest in," Wagner says. "It wasn't any planned thing, people were just into it."
Hartman continues, "New Orleans is a total breeding ground for stuff like that. You can start a band doing anything, and people will take it seriously and come listen to it, and if it's good they'll get into it. Whether it's 3 Now 3 or Michael Skinkus' new weird band [Taino Folkloric Ensemble] or Mas Mamones or whatever. So you can do anything you want, as long as it's good people will take an interest in it."
"It allows people a lot of freedom," elaborates Freilich. "If you have something that you want to do, you can get musicians together and figure out a way to do it. If you love the players you see around and want to get involved in playing with them, there are ways to do it without getting frustrated. That's the way everyone gets to be in this town. The bands all come up this way. You've got to make it through a gig. In most cities, a music show happens once a week and there are a bunch of bands on the same bill so each one has only an hour to play. So there, you rehearse a set and try to make it go over really big in an hour and hope that someone will see it. Here, everyone has to be able to make it through a four-hour gig."
As to the uniqueness of New Orleans in this regard, Hartman is adamant: "I don't think this band could exist like it does in any other city," he explains. "This is a town that gets into dance music and into original music and anything bizarre. People spend a lot of time listening to jazz and instrumental music, so they don't have the expectations for bands people do in other cities. People here will see a band like us, with accordions and horns, and it's not some novelty band, they're not shocked at all. They'll come out with the attitude of, 'Oh, another crazy band with another type of crazy music that we like to party to.' So we evolved primarily as a good New Orleans party band, we made our own place in the New Orleans party scene."
Recently the NOKAS made some significant progress toward appeal outside of their home city. On July 4, the band performed in Washington, D.C. at a show organized by the Smithsonian. The American Roots Concert featured bands from around the country who play in a specific tradition, but incorporate modern influences into their music. Smithsonian folklorist Nick Spitzer was instrumental in getting the NOKAS to play on July 4, and has asked them back to the Wolf Trap on Halloween to play with Beausoleil fiddler Michael Doucet's Cajun-rock band, Coteau.
"World music in general is becoming a viable option for record labels," Hartman says of the resurgence in folk music. "People are getting into it. It's a whole backlash from synthesizers, everyone is playing real instruments, even all the pop bands."
"There are about six or seven big [klezmer] bands in America that travel around and people know," Freilich continues. "They all have a personal take, and some, like the New Klezmer Trio, are even more far-out than we are. We've ended up with our own sound, but the music itself is in a fast-developing stage and has been for about the last twenty years."
"There aren't that many klezmer bands, but there is definitely a revival, there are definitely people into the music. There is a klezmer scene. Just recently we're being included with the bigger klezmer bands," Ellman says. "There's like a klezmer mafia thing going on, and now everyone is getting kind of freaked out because we're getting really good and moving it in a hip direction. We're doing almost all original compositions, whereas most bands are doing traditionals. It took a long time, but we're finally getting recognition outside of the touring club circuit we've been hitting, more of the people who are really into world music, folk music, ethnic music -- they're getting into our music. We're starting to reach a much wider audience. We're not only the hottest klezmer band in the Southeast, we're the only klezmer band in about a 500 mile radius."
In addition to these widely-visible national performances, the NOKAS just completed a new record, The Big Kibosh, for the New York-based Shanachie label. The band is extremely happy with the sessions, and the resulting record is perfectly representative of the band. Mixed in with more traditional sounding numbers is a large dose of the band's inherent humor, as well as a bit of local New Orleans funk, particularly on "Klip Klop."
"We were definitely rehearsing in the studio, but it was very organic, we were hitting stuff live," Hartman says of the sessions. "The reason this record sounds so good is because of this guy Matt Baxter, he was an engineer and a half. He placed the mics in an incredible way. I don't think Shanachie had any idea what they were getting when they signed us. They hadn't ever seen us in New Orleans, they didn't know any of us personally -- I don't think they had any idea they were getting a band with four people who could write music with energy. We went in there and they set up all the mics, and our A&R guy and the producer were there. We hit the first song and thought it was a take, so went into the room and there they were with their jaws, like, on the floor. I don't know what they were seeing. I think they were seeing dollar signs."
"After we made this last record, I listened to the band and was so surprised that it was us. I thought it sounded so amazing," says Ellman. "I think the band will definitely be around for a while. I mean, who can say who will be in the band, but the band itself is an institution by now. We've got our own Mardi Gras parade."
Whatever the record and wider audience bring to the NOKAS, it seems unlikely the band will become jaded to the point of losing their sense of humor about playing. Their as-of-yet unofficial Mardi Gras parade, the Juloo parade, marches behind Zulu on the same route and has for the past three years, except when city officials cleared them off the route. As this interview wound down, the joking and bickering among the band turned things ludicrous, much like how the band's music builds in intensity to a point of chaotic hysteria.
Jonathan Freilich: I'm never sure what to say in these interviews. Is it best to use the opportunity to just talk about yourself?
Robert Wagner: I think they should fix Tchoupitoulas street.
JF: Absolutely, and how about Burgundy street near Buffa's?
Glenn Hartman: And that new Mardi Gras krewe? Bad idea. All they're doing is soliciting people from outside New Orleans.
JF: That's like Krewe of Mickey Mouse.
RW: Plus, our krewe should be allowed to parade. Every year we follow Zulu, but sometimes they try to stop us.
JF: You're lucky, this is actually the last interview I'm going to do before I start the Marlon Brando thing where I won't discuss myself at all, I'll only discuss the plight of the American Indians. I don't know why we're talking about this, anyway.
RW: What was the question?
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