2 October 2008

"So when it comes to having a good time, anti-semitism and all that falls away.  When it comes to a party, it all falls away - nationalities, rich and poor, whether you're plain or good-looking.  Because music is magic, the most beautiful thing in the world.  Without it, I would have been in the next world long ago."

The  words of Ben Bazyler, a life-long Klezmer musician, born in the Ukraine, quoted in the CD accompanying book entitled Klezmer Music, A Marriage of Heavey & Earth.  It was a way of life in Eastern Europe, and for some the memory lingers.  Have we not lost something of our ability to come together, and enjoy being together and enjoying - through music?  Has anyone attended a bluegrass festival, where for some the major attraction is to gather together behind the stage to engage in the pick-up group that gathers there to play together.  It's not all lost; that is much of what folk music is all about.

When I read Bazyler's words I couldn't help but remember the night in Petersburg, Virginia when I attended a session in the basement of a home.  Maybe as many as twelve people had gathered there to play and sing - they do so every Monday night, just for the fun of being together and playing the music they all love; and it sounded fine.

No, it's not all lost, but there seems to be less and less as we rocket into modernism, at least in this country, but surely elsewhere as well.  And when we finally lose it ,we will have lost something precious, for there is little in our culture replacing it.  It's not only the music; the music is just a vehicle for something deeper, and that is what is so precious.    The Germans would  call it gemütlichkeit; it seems they are losing it as well.

The music of the past lubricated our very souls, bringing warm comradeship and that feeling of gemütlichkeit.  Life just won't be the same without it - but that will be after I am gone, thankfully.