Kyiv Post - 07.25.2002

Kyiv Post

Kyiv Tunes Up for Jewish Folk Music Festival

By Daniel MacIsaac

If you're a fan of Jewish folk music, weddings and cultural revival, then there's good news for you.

The three year old festival of klezmer music, Klezfest Ukraine, is coming to Kyiv for the first time. That means that beginning July 28 there will be four days of seminars and jam sessions for registered participants and, on Aug. 1, a free gala concert for the public.

If you're not familiar with klezmer, it's a term that can describe the traveling musicians who once performed at Jewish weddings and holiday celebrations across Eastern Europe; musicians who perform any Jewish folk music derived from East European folk songs, Hebrew melodies or polkas; or the name for the resulting music itself.

Klezfest Ukraine is run by the Kyiv based Jewish Education Center – and for the first two years was held in Yevpatoria, Crimea. But this year the seminar component of the festival is being held in the Kyiv village of Pushcha Vodytsa, while the concluding concert takes place in Podil. Festival organizer Yana Yanover explained the reason for the move.

"We want to reach a bigger community; not only the Jewish community but a larger public," she said. "There's also the idea of developing tolerance and interest in klezmer and in the people who sing Yiddish music. Klezmer music comes from Ashkenazi culture, which was born here in Eastern Europe, but which moved away and is only now coming back."

The seminar component is attracting some 50 teachers and musicians from across Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Estonia. Among the teachers from the West will be Yiddish song specialist Adrianne Cooper, artistic director of the Broadway Jewish Theater "Folksbineh" Zalmen Mlotek; celebrated klezmer clarinetist Merlin Shepherd of Britain; and Stas Raiko, leader of what is arguably Ukraine's top klezmer band, the Kharkiv Klezmer Band. Festival guests are to include Eda Beregovskaya, daughter of Jewish folk music researcher Moshe Beregovsky, as well as Cyril Robinson, a sound archivist from the Chicago department of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Yale University student Jeffery Pearlman of the Metropolitan Klezmer Band will also participate.

Yanover said the seminars have two main goals:

"The purpose is to bring greater self identity to the assimilated people in Jewish communities across the countries where the participants live – and to teach the musicians not only how to perform the music, but also how to promote it," she said. "Klezmer is popular in Western Europe and in the United States and we want it to be [popular] here, too."

Yanover said there are the beginnings of a revival underway in Ukraine. She said that while Jewish culture and music was restricted during periods of Soviet rule, kernels of it remain alive in communities across Ukraine – and younger people are interested in learning more.

"In Pervomaisk in the Mykolayiv oblast, for instance, there are musicians who played klezmer as long ago as the 1930s and 1940s and who are now teaching the younger musicians," she said. "It helps them discover their Jewish identity through music."

But Yanover also stressed that Klezfest is not restricted to Jews, and all are welcome to participate. The same philosophy underlies the Aug. 1 gala concert: It's free and open to everyone. But those interested in the seminars or in attending the concert should contact the Jewish Educational Center for details.