Citizen Of The World
For clarinetist David Krakauer, klezmer music is more than an art form, it's how he can be a light unto the nations
In the late 1980s, David Krakauer got his first taste of klezmer. He was already an established New York-based classical clarinetist—no small feat—but he joined a small group, played unpretentious wedding and community center gigs, made an effort to learn the style’s intricacies off old recordings, and began a 30-plus-years-and-counting love affair with the genre. “When I started playing klezmer music, I said to myself, ‘This is going to be my musical home, where I am going to find my own language, bringing in influences of jazz, funk, contemporary classical music, and all the stuff to put into the soup,’” he says.
But for Krakauer, klezmer wasn’t just a musical pursuit, it was also a way to embrace his Jewish heritage, and, oddly enough, something of a political statement.
“There we were in Berlin, with a thousand dancing, screaming, partying young Europeans,” Krakauer says about his first European tour with the innovative klezmer ensemble, the Klezmatics. “What I loved about it was that Jews, before the Second World War, were like the multicultural Europeans. When we came, we were these American Jews coming to play in Europe. We were seen as representatives of tolerance and multiculturalism without waving a flag, without getting up on a soapbox. We could be very political, but not in a didactic way. I was very excited to be a part of that … Still to this day, I feel very passionate that my message should be about tolerance, and about cultures coming together with the various projects that I’ve done.”
Following a seven-year run with the Klezmatics, Krakauer launched a string successful solo projects and collaborations, which include his bands Klezmer Madness and Ancestral Grooves; his ongoing association with Canadian beat maker and producer, Socalled; his compositions, recordings, and looping experiments with pianist Kathleen Tagg; numerous multimedia projects; and even a long-running genre-smashing ensemble with—wait for it—funk legend Fred Wesley.
“We contacted Fred … but I think he was a bit perplexed, ‘What do these Jewish guys want from me?’” Krakauer laughs. “We knew right away that we had chemistry. We convened a full band, had a rehearsal the next day, and that was it, Abraham Inc. was born. A month later we went into Zankel Hall, at Carnage Hall, and did our first gig.”
I spoke with Krakauer from his home in New York, and we talked about his long, roundabout journey to klezmer, trading solos with violinist Itzhak Perlman, the—once you hear it—obvious reason he thinks klezmer and funk fit naturally together, and how being a klezmer musician is part of his greater Jewish journey.
Did you grow up in a musical home?
My late mom was a classical violinist. She had studied with one of the great violin teachers, Ivan Galamian. She was on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music in the prep department and also in the extension division. She played chamber music and a did a bunch of things like that. She stopped playing to raise me and my sister, but when we were teenagers, she got back into music and mostly had a career as a teacher. But she did some chamber music, and had a couple of chamber music partners that she worked with.
When did you start playing clarinet?
I was 10 years old, and I had the opportunity to study in my elementary school. At that point, my mom said, “You’re 10 years old. You’re way too old to play the violin. You ought to play the clarinet or the flute.” She said it in that order, so I chose the clarinet. Also, my parents left recordings around the house. They were playing George Gershwin’s, “Rhapsody in Blue,” which I got into, with the great clarinet solo. Darius Milhaud’s,the Creation of the World [La Création du Monde], an incredible piece, which also has this very cool jazzy clarinet solo. When I was 11 years old, I got a gift of a recording by Sidney Bechet. When I heard him play, I thought, “Wow, that’s what I want to do with my life. I want to play music.” He really communicated and spoke with his instrument.
Did you go to New York’s high school for the performing arts?
It was called the High School of Music and Art. I think it was called the LaGuardia—there were two LaGuardia high schools, one was on 46 Street in the theater district, and the one I went to was in Harlem, on 135 and Convent Avenue. That’s where I met Anthony Coleman, who is on the faculty at the New England Conservatory. He’s an incredible old friend, and he really got me thinking about music in a different way. I was a kid playing the clarinet, I went to high school, and Anthony was a full-fledged composer. He was deeply into Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington as jazz composers. He led a band, and I became part of the band. I was playing classical clarinet, but I wanted to be a jazz saxophonist. But I never practiced the saxophone, I was practicing the clarinet all the time. He said, “Why don’t you play jazz clarinet?” He and I bummed around and hung out in New York. We saw Duke Ellington live many times. We saw Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry at Ornette’s loft on Prince Street. We saw Charles Mingus at the Five Spot, which was at that time on St Mark’s Place in New York. We saw the Count’s Men, which was the old Count Basie sidemen like Papa Jo Jones and Earle Warren, from the 1930’s band. We grew up with this together, and by knowing Anthony Coleman, I got into the world of composition, creativity, of improvisation.
But, at least initially, did you go the classical route?
What happened with me was that in my early 20s, I started to have a crisis of confidence about playing jazz. I felt you really need to have your own original voice, and I didn’t know whether I could find that. I guess I got cold feet. I got scared. I pretty much abandoned jazz and focused on classical music. I went to Sarah Lawrence College. In high school, I started studying with a guy named Leon Russianoff. Leon was incredible. He had this studio on 48th and Broadway, right in Times Square and the Theater District. You’d go up and all these people were coming by his place. He had a store. He was a Jewish communist. He went to City College in the 1930s. He was just an amazing man, and I loved him. He was my main teacher. I studied classical music with him. Then I lived in Paris for a year, and I went to the Paris Conservatory. I came back, got my masters at Juilliard, and I went out into the world. In my 20s, I did this apprenticeship of playing symphonic music, contemporary chamber music, and the standard repertoire of chamber music. I was in the Marlborough Music Festival—all different major music festivals—but then, when I was in my early 30s, I again had a sort of crisis. I said to myself, “My God, I threw the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t improvise anymore. I want to improvise. I want to create.” That led me to klezmer music. There had been an early revival with people like Brave Old World, Andy Statman, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and those kind of bands, where people were looking at the old records, trying to make versions of the old music, and finding the music again.
That revival had passed, and then in the late 1980s—and this coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the opening up of Eastern Europe. At that time, I was reading this series Phillip Roth was publishing called, Writers from the Other Europe, which was Eastern European writers like Bruno Schulz, Witold Gombrowicz—who was a Polish writer who wrote Ferdydurke, which was an underground classic in communist Poland. It was written in the 1930s, but then it was banned by the communist government, but it had this life. Milan Kundera from then-Czechoslovakia was very well known. These books were being publish. The Iron Curtain was softening, Perestroika, and then at that time, suddenly, this created this fertile soil for the second revival. I stumbled into it by accident. I wanted to play creative music. I wanted to do something. And then I ran into some people who said, “We’re looking for a clarinetist in our klezmer band.” They thought, because I was an established classical musician, that I would probably recommend a friend or a student. But the words just came out of my mouth, “I’d like to try.”
It was an amazing moment, and I joined that band. It was a pretty low-key band, and we played these little gigs out in Brooklyn. Suddenly, I was seeing Yiddish speakers who weren’t Hasidim, children of garment workers, and other people speaking Yiddish. I thought that was amazing. I had decided to get into klezmer music not to have another career, but because I wanted to do something that was outside of all this classical stuff. I wanted to get off the page. I wanted to get back to more creative music making. And then, I also wanted to connect to my Judaism in a more meaningful way then my pro forma bar mitzvah that I had. I went through the motions. I did the bar mitzvah—I actually loved it, I loved learning my Haftorah, I loved writing my speech, and I was very proud that day—but then I moved on. I say to people that I pressed the delete button. I was into jazz and other things. But this was an opportunity for me to connect to my Judaism on my own terms. I always had this spark, because I had this grandmother who was born in Belarus, and came to America as a teenager. She spoke with a thick Yiddish accent. She and my grandfather were married in 1914, and I actually attended their 70th wedding anniversary. That was pretty intense. She was amazing, and this was a spark for me. I heard this Yiddish, and that’s part of me. That was something that was swept under the rug by my parents’ generation, and even my grandparents’ generation. They were like, “We’re in America and we’re moving on. We’re becoming Americans.” I never heard my grandmother speak Yiddish, just with her thick Yiddish accent. Klezmer was a way for me to explore my Judaism. I was working with this band, playing these little gigs in Jewish community centers and old age homes, little parties, little weddings, but very low-key.
Then the band, the Klezmatics, heard about me, and they snapped me up. I went to Germany with them. We got to this big festival in Germany, and we were playing klezmer music, but we played highly amplified, and we played with a lot of attitude. Our motto was, “No shtick, no nostalgia”—just come in and hit it hard. We were like a Jewish punk band in a way, with that attitude. Suddenly, there we were in Berlin, with a thousand dancing, screaming, partying young Europeans. There were some Jewish people there, too. There were always the Jews who came out of the woodwork, but primarily we were playing for Europeans, and that was really cool. I stayed with the Klezmatics for about seven or eight years. I did a lot of touring with them, primarily in Germany, because that was where our biggest market was. What I loved about it was that Jews, before the Second World War, were like the multicultural Europeans. When we came, we were these American Jews coming to play in Europe. We were seen as representatives of tolerance and multiculturalism without waving a flag, without getting up on a soapbox. We could be very political, but not in a didactic way. I was very excited to be a part of that. That opened a lot of doors for me, and still to this day, I feel very passionate that my message should be about tolerance, and about cultures coming together with the various projects that I’ve done. That’s the message that I try to put forward.
Were you with the Klezmatics when Itzhak Perlman played with them?
Yes I was. I am on that PBS special.
It looks like Perlman showed up and jammed. Did he have tunes prepared. How did that work?
He had tunes prepared. There was a great moment in that. We were jamming, and Alicia Svigals was showing Perlman stuff. He was imitating her, and that was cool, and then at one point, he says, “Let’s hear the clarinet player.” I started playing this crazy solo with my crazy stuff. That was always my thing. When I started playing klezmer music, I said to myself, “This is going to be my musical home, where I am going to find my own language, bringing in influences of jazz, funk, contemporary classical music, and all the stuff to put into the soup, so to speak.” I was playing this crazy solo and Perlman—he was always one to mug for the camera—he went up close to the camera and made a face that said, “What the f— is this guy doing?!?” But it was friendly, it surprised him. Then on the album, In The Fiddler’s House, there’s a composition, “Di Gayster,” where Perlman and I are jousting. I always felt I incited him to scream on his violin a little bit, which is very gratifying for me, because he’s always such a polished and refined player. I said to him, “Come on man, give me some grit here”—and that was fun.
When did you leave the Klezmatics?
That brings us up to the mid 1990s, and a couple of things were going on. I was feeling at that time that I really wanted to lead my own project, be a band leader, and have an area where I could develop my stuff, my compositions, and my own language that I was developing. Another thing that was going on was that I was asked to record a major work by the Boston-based composer, Osvaldo Golijov, to record his incredible composition for clarinet and string quartet, the Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. I got the opportunity to record that piece with the Kronos Quartet in February of 1996. That was a trigger moment for me also, giving me the confidence to say that it’s time to move on and to be a leader, to be a soloist.
We’re still all friends. I left on very good terms, and very amicably with the Klezmatics, but it really was time for me, personally, to leave. I did that big recording—incidentally that Golijov piece was adapted for clarinet and string orchestra, and I recorded it 20 years later, in 2016, with another Boston-based group, A Far Cry. I recored the piece again with them, and we were nominated for a Grammy for that.
I did that, left the Klezmatics, and formed my own band, originally with two of my colleagues, multi-instrumentalist Michael Alpert, and drummer David Licht. I called it the Krakauer Trio, but after a while I wanted to expand it to a bigger band, so I changed the name of the band to Klezmer Madness.
Is that a play on the movie, Refer Madness?
It was actually a play on the Sonny Rollins album that features John Coltrane, Tenor Madness. A madness of some sort. That was the name of my band for a number of years.
Is that still the name of your working band?
I changed the name, or switched projects to something called, Ancestral Groove. But while I was doing the Klezmer Madness project, a couple of things happened. In 1999, I was invited to this big festival in France. What happened was, a couple of years before that, John Zorn had invited me to record on his Tzadik label. I did two records, Klezmer Madness, which was the trio, and then another record called Klezmer New York. That was a more evolved record, with more of my own compositions, and all kinds of different explorations. I still love that record. Those Tzadik recordings traveled the world, and they fell into the hands of a French jazz critic named Alex Dutilh. Alex heard my recordings, and he started to write about me in French publications. That led to an invitation for me to go do a concert at the Maison de la Culture, the Culture House, in Amiens, which is a town in Picardy, north of Paris. I went to there, played a concert, and that evening I met my booking agent, who is still my booking agent in France. I started working with the French record label, Label Bleu, which is a jazz label affiliated with that French Culture house. I arrived in Amiens, and these journalists met me and wanted to interview me, and they said, “David, you know, our English, we make a lot of mistakes, we are so sorry…” And I said, “I speak fluent French. Let’s do it in French.”
Was that because you lived there for a year before you went to Juilliard?
Yeah, I had lived there 23 years before. I used my French here and there, but not very much. But it came back into my head pretty much intact. I did those interviews, and that really opened up a door. That’s why I tell anybody I can tell that getting a view into another culture is so important. To know how other people think, and if you get into another culture, you start to think differently about the world. If I can put a parenthesis in here, I think America is really messed up now—the mindset is that the blinders are on—and that’s because people don’t understand other cultures. I found it so valuable to learn another language, to have a peek into another culture, to understand profoundly that other cultures are different, and that there are cultural differences. People think differently, and one has to have that flexibility in one’s thinking.
And it’s ok that people think differently.
That’s the point. Exactly. That really helps in communicating with other people. “I understand that’s your culture. This is my culture. Let’s chat.” That was a great thing, but also, in a practical sense, it was super-useful that I knew French, and that I was able to have an in into French culture. I would say that France is still my biggest market.
That happened in the late 1990s, and then in the early 2000s—around 2001—I met this young guy who went by the name of Socalled. Socalled is a Canadian, Montreal-based, multi-instrumentalist, producer, beat maker, singer, and rapper. He’s a Jewish guy, and his real name is Josh Dolgin. I met him, and he said to me, “I have this record I made in my basement in Montreal, and it is called, A Hip Hop Seder.” I thought to myself, “Oh God, what will they think of next? It will be Passover tunes with a hip hop beat.” I was prepared to hate it. But when I heard the music, I said, “Wow, this is so brilliant, so clever.” I hate that word, “clever,” but it was damn clever. It was so sophisticated and the way he used the samples of old Yiddish and old klezmer records, but in such a crafty and intelligent and brilliant way. I thought, “This guy is a real pioneer. He is doing hip hop with Jewish music, but not like a joke.” It was really music that he was making. Plus, the way a sample can evoke a whole world. For example, suddenly you’re in the 1940s in your brain for a second, because of the way a two-second sample can take you into another place. I brought him onboard with Klezmer Madness as a featured artist. He contributed a track for my record, the Twelve Tribes. He’s on my record, Krakauer Live in Krakow. We coproduced the record, Bubbemeises—Lies My Gramma Told Me.
How did you hook up with Fred Wesley?
That was the next thing. We were chatting one night after a gig, and it turned out that our drummer, Michael Sarin, had run into a guy who played with Fred Wesley. I grew up hearing the James Brown records, when James Brown would yell out, “Hit Me Fred,” and Fred would play the most funky trombone solos. I grew up with that, as well as listening to the horn writing on Mothership Connection, with Parliament Funkadelic. I was extremely familiar with Fred Wesley. Socalled took it to the next level. He was an incredible devotee of Fred Wesley. He knew everything of Fred Wesley, all the small band stuff, everything. When Michael mentioned this guy who was playing with Fred Wesley, Socalled’s ears perked up. I wasn’t there when Michael first mentioned Fred Wesley, but after this gig, we were talking, and Socalled said, “What about Fred Wesley? Let’s bring him into the fold.” That was when this incredible lightbulb went off in both of our heads, “That would be amazing.”
We contacted Fred. I sent him some of my records, and he thought they sounded great, but I think he was a bit perplexed. “What do these Jewish guys want from me?” We met Fred. We had a test period. Fred and I met for lunch, and he said, “I am interested in doing it. I’ll be back in New York this time…” We met, and it was me, Socalled, and Fred. Fred broke the ice. He said, “Give me a beat.” Socalled had a beat from our tune, “Baleboste.” Fred started playing along with the beat, I started jamming with Fred, and we knew right away that we had chemistry. Right there, there was this incredible chemistry. We convened a full band, had a rehearsal the next day, and that was it, Abraham Inc. was born. A month later we went into Zankel Hall, at Carnage Hall, and did our first gig. We weren’t even called Abraham Inc. yet, it was David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness featuring Socalled with special guest Fred Wesley.
Pairing klezmer and funk is seemingly incongruous, yet they work well together.
They really do work well together. Both funk and klezmer don’t do a lot of chord changes, and are harmonically pretty simple. You get this chance to grind in a kind of trance, sitting on one tonality, and then making all this stuff around it. Also, klezmer, obviously, has roots in cantorial music or synagogue music. It’s a music of supplication. Funk also has roots in church, in gospel, which is also music of supplication. There are these common points. People say, “You’re mixing klezmer, funk, and hip hop. What is that?” I say, “It is actually the most logical thing you can do.” However, if a record producer were to say, “I’ll put a klezmer guy, a funk guy, and a hip hop guy together,” it might not have worked. Fred is super-open. My whole vibe has always been about searching, exploration, crossing genres. Socalled was always about mashing things up and finding new stuff. I also think it worked because of the people involved. The three of us were the right partners to make this happen.
What’s the story with your recent project, Breath & Hammer?
That’s a project with my partner, Kathleen Tagg. She’s a great pianist, composer, and producer. Breath & Hammer is a clarinet and piano, but it’s also thousands of samples of clarinets and pianos.
Are those samples of you playing?
It’s our samples. Bowed and plucked notes on the piano. We’d overdub two or three or four bowed notes to make a chord pad. There are plucked notes, and it’s all of this edited together. Kathy credits herself as piano and piano orchestra, because she created a kind of piano orchestra. There are also samples of bass clarinet, and recorded little bits of this and that. She works by writing symphonic scores and then orchestrating them through this tapestry of samples.
You said earlier that exploring this music has been a way to embrace your Jewish identity. Since then, has that been manifest in ways other than music?
I think it is basically the music, but I have felt like—and continue to feel like—that for the past almost-30 years of being on a great Jewish journey. I say a “Jewish journey,” because I am Jewish, and that I am meeting people all over the world. It’s this great journey of exploration and learning about what people are doing in the greater Judaism, and being a part of it. People come up to me on the street, wheeling a baby carriage, and say, “You played our wedding five years ago”—to be a part of the life cycle. Also, many people have said, “Your music has inspired me, or your music has brought me closer to myself.” I am not proselytizing for any kind of religion, ever, and I think you are wired in a certain way through your acculturation and how you grow up. I’ve never been religious. I don’t think I ever will be—never say never—but I do think for me that it’s been amazing to meet Jewish people in all walks of life, and in all kinds of endeavors. To be part of that ecosystem, it’s very interesting and gratifying. Also, I think as a Jewish person, I feel I have a responsibility for tikkun olam, for healing the world. For me, I think the base message of all religions is about how we organize ourselves, our thinking, our way of being moral people in the world, and of being good citizens. In that sense, playing Jewish music, playing music that has passion—playing music that is connected to thousands of years of my history—it is incredibly gratifying to be able to do that, and to be able to be a good citizen in the world using that vessel.
Photos: top (black & white) by GMD; color shot, POLIN Museum / M. Starowieyska
How can I support the Ingathering?
Great question! Although we are planning to offer a paid tier in the future, for now, the Ingathering is completely free. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy, or free, to produce. If the spirit moves you—and why wouldn’t it?—go here and make a donation. The Ingatheringis a project of Vechulai—a registered 501(c)3 tax exempt organization—which means that your contribution is tax deductible. Give ‘til it hurts!