The Murder of Leo Frank, 100 years ago this week.

There's quite a few Jewish people involved in the study and performance of American old time musical traditions. As it happens, I'm one of them. I could do literally hundreds of essays about the curious nature of this strange truth, which I found to be not limited to the American experience but actually happens world wide; Jews seem to be at the vanguard of nearly every great cultural output around the globe. 

Well, yes, um, nearly every one save their own Yiddish culture it seems. Rather than address that confusing conundrum, I chose rather to focus on a dark chapter of Southern American history that I hope would bring context to this disconnect in a way that would have some resonance, and maybe give my fellow claw-hammer banjo slinging Hebrews a new lens with which to view their place in the narrative that created the "old time" music so many of us have participated in for so long.

Years ago I was reading a article on Georgia Fiddle styles. I was genuinely shocked when I came across an aside about the influential and media savvy fiddler John Carson, where it was reported that he would serenade the crowds gathered outside of the Atlanta Courthouse during the Leo Frank trial , composing songs designed to whip up the anti-Semitic sentiments of the crowd, including a little ditty sung by the assembled "Hang the Little Jew."

Hmmmm.

"Wonder how many folks know that story?" I thought to myself. So I looked up the YouTube video for John Carsons' "Little Mary Phagan," where I made the mistake of reading the comments section. 

OK, right. So here we are 100 years after the fact and nearly NO Jewish person I know knows literally anything about it, yet rage filled bigots are all over the interwebs using the the event as if happened last week and proves every evil narrative against the Jews that you could possibly imagine. It would be hilarious if it were not so real. What do you do when presented with that kind of hatred? Not "long ago" hatred, but RIGHT NOW TODAY hatred.

I'm a folk singer, so my only response naturally is a folk song:

Though it's only gotten less than 200 plays, Its already been singled out by the twitter account that runs www.leofrank.org as "Jewish pedophile convicted of murdering a child is romanticized by anti-Gentile Jewish activist bard." Classy.

As I note in the song, August 17th marks his yahrtzeit and by extension, the eventual founding of the Anti-Defamation League. I'll be singing this ballad this Monday at a local ADL meeting here in NOLA. Maybe somewhere, someplace else, there will be a landsman who will also sing of Leo Frank and maybe want to learn a nice Yiddish fiddle tune, rather than one more North Georgia tune. Maybe.

Unsolicited Advice to a young American Jew

(Here's a new series, poetic responses. Some are song ideas, some just free verse. This was inspired by Bernie Saunders citizenship being questioned simply because he's a Jew.)

Unsolicited Advice to a young American Jew

When you’re better off rich and guilty than innocent and poor

Then it’s time to go

When they pass laws that directs who you can or cannot marry

Then it’s time to go

When terrible ideas about race and immigration are considered mainstream

Then it’s time to go

When the goyim no longer value art and culture, not even their own

Then it’s time to go

When they say that protecting a paycheck trumps clean drinking water

Then it’s time to go

When ignorance and stupidity are routinely rewarded and violence is celebrated

Then it’s time to go

When you’re forced to explain your stance on Eretz Yirsroel

Then it’s time to go           

When the privileged begin to  portray themselves as real victims

Then it’s time to go

When sexism is so deeply ingrained in culture, that you almost forgot to mention it

Then it’s time to go

When you’re the racist whenever you correctly identify racism

Then it’s time to go

Either pack and expatriate, or register and vote, either way

It’s time to go

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Troubled thoughts on a trip to Trenchin Slovakia, July 2007

(Note: I wrote this essay 3 years ago but have hesitated to publish it, until now. Why, I have no idea? I had written quite a bit about my trip to rural Slovakia on this very blog here and here. From reading those postings, you could never imagine the kind of conflict the experience awoke in me. Over 3 years later, I'm still sorting through it.)


This week finds me headed to the Slovakia to perform with Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All Stars. We’re slated to perform at the “ethno” music stage of the massive Pohoda music festival along with Boban and Marko Markovic’s amazing brass orchestra. The concept of this stage show is based around a joint recording project we made a few years ago called the “Brotherhood of Brass,” exploring the legion similarities between the Jewish and Rroma musical traditions and the ability of music making to create connection beyond any cultural boundaries. The resulting CD was a minor hit on the World Music scene in Europe, which unlike the States they actually have a World Music scene supported by a eager fan base and media infrastructure. We have toured this show for several summers and working and traveling with these amazing bandsmen has been the experience of a lifetime, let me tell you. From the highest peaks in musical performance and camaraderie to the deepest depths of witnessing anti-Gypsy racism. Quite a ride at any rate, and I always look forward to playing with these cats one more time.

It’s nearly 40 degrees Celsius (well over 100 Fahrenheit) when the taxi driver drops me off at the hotel in Trencin, fully an hour and a half’s drive from the Bratislava airport. I’m feeling ill from lack of sleep and probably the gamey tuna salad served on the Czech Airways flight over, and I actually utilized the airsickness bag provided in the seat pockets for the first time in my life. Now at the “Sport Hotel ostrov Zamarovce” I’m shown my room, which for Eastern standards is quite all right, with a recently renovated and thus fully operative bathroom. But like most of Europe there is no air conditioning like we are quite used to in Texas. The heat is familiar, and with the hotel facing the gently flowing River Van, there are quite a few mosquitoes as well to remind me of summer at home. I make plans to take a short nap and then head into the city center in search of a table fan so that I will be able to sleep in this heat.
After walking for what seems like hours, I locate a supermarket on a major road on the outskirts of town, purchase a nice fan and then head back to the hotel, making note to cut through the old city center to see what I can see. So I’m walking along the central pedestrian zone when I spy one of those handy-for-the-tourists sign posts that says things like “” and "Synogoga>"  Hmmm. Well, by golly, it is Friday evening, shabbes, and all. How cool would it be to daven with the locals in little ol’ Trencin Slovakia?
It has been a long-standing custom of mine that when time in the touring schedule allows, I’ll seek out the local schul and at least get inside it and look around. On the odd occasion, and depending on the Jewish calendar, I have actually been able to daven (pray) with the local Yidn. Like the time in Utrecht Holland where the rabbi there knows my local own Chababd rebbe well and even lived at the Chabad House in Austin for a time. Every now and again I have in fact been the 10th man required for a minyan (a religious quorum,) like at the amazing Sephardic temple in downtown Bordeaux France. Such an occurrence is quite an honor among my tribe, and at the very least you’ll be sure to meet some interesting new folks.

No doubt my Rebbe back home will chuckle aloud when he reads this, as getting me into his services usually require a bribe of paying gig or some such, but even he will know what I mean when I say that I am often more at home with strangers, especially when they are Jewish strangers. Moreover it our collective practice of Jewish ness is all that is required to bind us together. My feeling is that my job after all, out on the road as a traveling Jewish musician from Texas, is to represent Jewish culture and I came quite a long way to do so. The very least I can do is at least behave like a Jew while I’m doing it. Thus, I trot off in the direction of the helpful sign, hoping in my mind they have a siddur (Jewish prayer book) I can make sense of.

Quickly I locate a large white Moorish building at the end of the small triangular public square. From it’s position and layout in relation to the square one can imagine that was the center for the Jewish district of this little provincial town. Viewed from a distance, it is beautiful; but there is no indication that this is a Jewish house of worship. No stars of David, no menorah, no nothing really. There is one little spot high up where you can see the outline of the traditional tablets of the Ten Commandments, and there is a lovely Tree of Life bas relief above one door way. But you get the feeling that there was once so much more adornment. It appears to have had a fresh if slap dash white wash in recent years, but the doors are all shut and looking in, it seems to be completely empty. Some of the windows are broken as well. All I can find is a Soviet era looking block letter plaque attached to the wall that from my clumsy translations refers to the “White Synagogue of Trencin” and notes simply its “historic oriental architecture.”

There indeed is a fine synagogue in Trencin, but there will be no shabbes here. There are no Jews here. The stark, sudden and complete realization that though this building may still stand and from the outside is beautiful and all, there are no Jews here to pray with. Not tonight, and probably never again I imagine. A wave of depression and sadness flushes over me. I mean what was I thinking? Jews must have prospered here, I mean why else would you have such a grand house of worship? Sure, as if after all the pogroms, the harassment by fascists from within and without, and then the gentle graces of the Soviets and their labor camps that there would be anyone left? These are the kind of things I see every time I head into the Eastern parts of Europe and this is just the sort of internal conversation I have with myself nearly every time. Much like a child finding out over and over again that there is no Santa Claus, I have to tell myself yet again; “Jews used to live here.”

Where many of them have gone was laid out perfectly clearly for me in a confirmation class years ago at Temple Emmanuel in Oklahoma City. In our Bar Mitzvah year our teachers decided that by then we were old enough to be introduced to the grim business of Holocaust studies. We started with the notorious documentary “Night and Fog,” a French collection of Nazi state archive footage of the Final Solution in vivid action. As I stare up at the plaque bolted to the side of this abandoned schul, situated just yards away from a strip of lively cafes filled with noisy patrons all safe and secure in their surroundings, all I can think of are the flickering grainy images of open pits filled with naked, lifeless bodies presented to me in that small darkened class room. It was hard not to actually. Just today on the plane to Bratislava I read in the English language newspaper the Prague Post that the new Jewish cemetery there has once again been abused and vandalized. “Authorities are considering installing video cameras and other security measures” it reports. No Jews left around to kick it seems, so a tombstone will have to suffice I guess. On my walk back to my hotel I make special note of the “White Power” spray painted on the side of the dilapidated, but still utilized, old Soviet era soccer stadium. It’s written in English, in my guess so that foreign travelers like myself will be perfectly clear of the message. “Just so you know, you (insert gypsy, Jew, any brown skinned person, ect..) are still not welcome. Have a nice day!”

It’s strolling the rustic cobblestones of these streets I think about Native Americans and Israel strangely enough. I mean as a young Okie Jew it was mighty hard to wrap your head around the concept of people locked in a seemingly never ending death grip, even taking to killing each other over a lousy strip of land actually smaller than the entire county I grew up in. A window to my perspective: Every Sunday we’d load up the car and the family would make the 100 mile trek down I-35 from Stillwater to OKC so I could get at least a modicum of Jewish education at the conservative schul there. The temples in Tulsa were a much a shorter distance, but as the old Jewish joke about the man stranded on a desert island that built two synagogues: one to pray in and one I wouldn’t set foot in, my dad insisted we make the longer car ride south every week. Truthfully I was never fully integrated into this community either, these “big city” Jews (only the start of a long, seemingly never ending pattern of outsider status for me as it turns out) as I was singled early out as the country bumpkin who spoke with a drawl and didn’t show up for Hebrew School on Tuesdays after regular school like everybody else. Thus, my Hebrew is still appalling and I still don’t feel too comfortable around city folk.

Passing by to the right of the windshield of the old VW van were mile after mile of gently rolling open Oklahoma country side, famed for it’s deep rich soil that produced corn, wheat, alfalfa and all manner of fresh foods. As well as vast areas open to grazing for sheep and cattle. It was hard to reconcile the experience of my weekly journey through great patches of open farmland with the instruction in my Sunday school noting the small Israeli Army’s taking of relatively tiny patches of arid desert like the Gaza Strip as great victories for the Jewish People. A Jewish People which as was made very clear meant me too.
But here’s another window of perspective: all that prime land that I admired from my car seat was actually at one time a reservation for the Iowa, Sac and Fox, Pottawatomie, and Shawnee peoples, “Civilized” Tribes who were given their “Indian Territory” in perpetuity by the Bureau of Indian Affairs after they had renounced violence, abandoned their native religions, acquiesced to the introduction of enforced Christianity and “proper” western morals and education, sending their children off to “Indian Schools” where any semblance of their culture was systematically and quite literally beaten out of them. 

Really?

 

But even after playing ball to such indignities from1889 to1906 the US government decided to rip up their contracts with the locals (again.) It was easy work to kick out the last remnants of a beaten down brown people now entirely debilitated by cheap whisky and small pox infected blankets, and then gleefully give out their land free to whatever freebooting white person decided to “stake his claim.” “Boomer Sooner” is the battle cry of the University of Oklahoma I was taught in college in homage of these “settlers.” But take some time to look it up and see just what kind of person these “Sooners” (creeps who snuck across the borders early to steal claims) and "Boomers" (big money financiers of poorer, soon-to-be-indentured white folks) actually were. And then consider carefully about how much honor we should bestow to such ilk. The history books trumpet this event as the “Great Land Run of Oklahoma,” but it looks like yet another wildly successful round of ethnic cleansing to me, no matter how rosy the victors wish to paint it.

I was raised in up close proximity to the decedents of this extra-special and long running New World Holocaust (1690 to present.) And thus I had been witness to the myriad levels of degradation and devastation that these actions had wrought. And how tragically and heart achingly they manifest themselves even today. To my pre-adolescent way of thinking, Jews and Native peoples seemed to have quite a bit in common; disempowered underdogs who only ever wanted to left alone to live in peaceful co-existence and who are still around despite everyone’s attempts to destroy us utterly simply for being unlike them. It was the very image that Israel worked to present to the world when I was a kid as well. This became one of the cornerstones of my personal Jewish identity in many ways.

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While writing all this down, I recall the experience of being dis-invited from a youth exchange program when I was 14. My father had wrangled hard for me a chance to spend a semester in South Africa with a family from his Rotary Club sister city. But I was yanked out of the running during the lengthy interview process; I’m pretty sure, all because I proffered the opinion that it was a terrible idea to have an oppressive and authoritarian White minority rule over so many un-empowered native people. And that I wasn’t interested in changing my opinion, no matter how fun an overseas journey might be. Mandela was still imprisoned and the nightly news showed scenes of the savage beating of protestors who only simply wanted a voice in their own affairs. It all looked too much like Kristalnacht to me, and I readily identified with the folks on the business end of the Police truncheon, rather than the well-fed white man clad in black riot gear. “You here can’t possibly understand the situation, it’s so much more complex as you imagine, I mean, the blacks are in no position to rule today.” I remember the young Afrikaner-Rotarian saying quite clearly in his genuinely honest attempts to dissuade me of such notions. “Yes, I’m not there and I can’t possibly know all the details.” I recall telling my advisor “But Apartheid is wrong. Period. It’s just wrong.” Needless to say, some less politically informed son of an Oklahoman Rotarian had a blissful few months outside Johannesburg away from his family, tucked in a safe white enclave far from the troublesome Blacks. Meanwhile, I stayed put and went noodling for Catfish with my Boy Scout troop in Lake Thunderbird instead.
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It was much later that I came to a very troublesome juncture in my though process about identity both personal and collective. When people wanted to debate things Israeli, and boy do American Jews like talking about Israel, I slowly began to realize that I as a Jew had more in common with a displaced and disempowered Palestinian than with an Israeli. You know, the un-empowered and disenfranchised folks, the people getting their doors kicked in and pulled out into the street at gunpoint. I could not, and can not, cotton the idea that a Jew could ever be the one in the riot gear, wielding a truncheon or leveling a weapon at a kid throwing rocks. And this, friends, is a very strange and uncomfortable place to be. (I take no joy in sharing the notion, though it will most likely outrage a great many folks I know. I only pray they will be able to see the situation from the filter of my own experience.)
Those who know me well understand that I have my whole life struggled greatly with the romantic notion of a “Jewish State” contrasted with the messy realities that the living, breathing, politically and socially complex place like what Israel has become. I was raised in a fairly Israel centric household for an Okie. Long ago, my mother had been a kibbutznik, picking oranges and working on her tan for a summer before she even met my father and often said she had the time of her life even though she wasn’t herself Jewish. As the Hillel director at the University of Oklahoma my father was a 24/7-full time Israel booster, a professional Zionist if you will, and seriously considered an Aliyah (the act of returning to the ancestral homeland) with the whole family in fact, though the constant threat of everyday violence in the Holy Land eventually nixed it the notion.

But the dichotomy of political realities of Nationhood mixed with the practice of a particular religion is a tough road to hoe as we say on the farm. And it’s made all the more complex when framed by the horrors of the Holocaust and the entire world’s collective shame in allowing such to happen, by golly, it all makes for a often sordid and mostly confusing conversation. It’s not a conversation many people, Jews especially, like to be open about in fact. Through my experience and and over time I have formed an opinion that the mostly assimilated Jews of America have in many ways made the idea of Israel their new "Temple," and by extension the repository of their own Jewish identity. Any conversation that includes an unfavorable review of that country’s day to day political policies then can be read as an attack against the core of one’s faith, rather than say, a respectful interest in world affairs and the struggle of Human Rights worldwide. It’s especially troubling when those policies seem from a distance appear to run contrary with the very practice of Judaism that someone like myself was raised with.

Trust me on this one non-Jewish readers, it’s a very prickly path to tread upon. I learned this the hard way once. In a lively post performance conversation on a long country drive with a completely assimilated, non- identified Jewish fiddler colleague of mine, I tried to debate as the devil’s advocate by criticizing a particularly churlish internal Israeli policy that I had read in the paper that day involving the bulldozing of Palestinian suicide bomber’s family homes, which sounded like an awful idea to me no matter how you sliced it. So upset by this stance of “betrayal” of “our people” they actually haven’t spoken a word to me this day. In an ironic twist that illustrates I think the complexity often involved with Jewish identity today, this very musician recently even changed her professional last name to be more palatable to the goyische market (and to be gentlemanly I won’t out them here.) To me this is a sign of ashamedness of not only personal family history but a clear signifier of the deepest level of Jewish self-loathing. But should you hold something other than the party line on absolute correctness the Jewish State and suddenly you’re “against us.” In the question that is Israel, even the conflicted and deeply self-loathing can magically answer as a Jew.
Ok, I must add that it’s all fine and well for a thoroughly assimilated Galutnik like me, make that an unreconstructed, tattooed, married goyische, happy-as-the-proverbial-Pig-in-a-Slop-trough Galutnik in fact, to sit in my air conditioned central Texas home and come up with my comfortable notions about what is and what should be is mighty easy, if not cowardly. But neighbors, let me tell you that a night walking the hot streets of Trencin Slovakia gave me yet a new perspective on what it really means to be Jewish in place where you are very much not welcome and makes me deeply reconsider a lot of the notions I have formed for myself up to this point.

I live in Texas and I truly believe that its been Gan Eden for me. It’s a wide-open land where anything has been possible. That there among these goyim, my culture and creed have never stood in the way, long enough albeit, of any opportunity that I ever desired. Bare in mind that last sentence was written by a man born into Payne County, Oklahoma: the shinny silver Rodeo buckle of the Southern Baptist Bible belt. I had been refused entrance into a public swimming pool on one occasion, black balled unceremoniously from a popular Fraternity (DeMolay,) and subjected to direct proselytizing nearly daily in the course of my public school education, all simply because I was a Jew, and maybe even more threateningly, quite comfortable in owning up to it. I have run the barbed gauntlet of small town, dumb as dirt and proud of it, cracker-dom my whole life (Toby Keith lived right up the road from me to give only one obvious example.) But I did it so effectively I might add that today I am faintly nostalgic for the attention it brought. That in a strange sort of Stockholm Syndrome, I am completely protective of my bygone hillbilly tormentors and will defend them, quite loudly, and speak to the nobler aspects of their (and to a great extent my own) culture of family, God, honor, respect, good fiddling, proper BBQ, hot biscuits, ect., against my Jewish Yankee buddies who would dare disparage my beloved South.

What I realize quite depressingly in my walk tonight is that I’ll bet there was a guy just like me right here in Trencin who said pretty much the same thing about his little hick hometown. Like me, I’ll reckon he couldn’t even conceive of living anywhere else, so rooted to his happy life surrounded the goyim who for the most part left him alone. “Sure, they don’t let us in all the way, and true enough sometimes around Easter some of the lummoxes will get hopped up on Jesus and vodka and beat somebody up” he would tell his buds in some other village ‘But business is good here, and we make a good life.” But almost imperceptibly one fine day, his situation started a downhill slide. The beatings got a bit more regular and a bit more vicious; the public indignities began to pile up, and the business not so good anymore. But it was better than someplace else, he kept telling himself. Much like a frog that is set into a pot of water doesn’t jump out, you can keep adding fire to the pot little by little until the water is completely boiling and the frog is then dead, completely unaware of its impending doom. So on one not so fine day, the trucks rolled in, the locals pointed out his apartment and that was that. He’s not around anymore to defend the positive aspects of Slovakian country living; of its jaunty brass bands, the beer halls filled with fine Pilsners, and of the rugged country folk who were his neighbors. Jews used to live here.
Israel, I note on a map, is a whole lot closer to Trencin than Texas. And with all its issues and complexities I reckon it would have looked like Gan Eden from that cat’s perspective. 

“History” as a wise man once said, “is a bitch.”

So here I am now, playing with a Gypsy brass band from Serbia in conjunction with a Jewish ensemble from NYC at a music festival held on the grounds of an old Soviet era airfield. Not without being painfully aware the irony, for the last few years the only paying work I have had a musician has been over here, in those places where we used to live. The only way I’ve been able to explain why so called “klezmer” music is so marketable to Europeans, and even East Europeans in fact, is to think of myself like an act in Bill Cody’s touring Wild West Show. I actually have to visualize myself as a musical Sitting Bull if you will, propped up in my native finery and prancing across the concert stage singing my Sacred Chants for a public that is only fascinated by the appearance of the proverbial “ones that got away”. I like to call it the “hospitality of the return ticket,” you can be nice just about anybody if you’re certain they aren’t here to stay. The vibe on the street is Happy, dancing Jews onstage, fine and dandy. But less than happy Jews coming back and asking for their families’ apartment and business, not so much.

Germany, which until recently was the biggest market for this music, never ever had this music there in the first place. But the collective guilt of the butcher’s children and grand children has brow beaten a public acceptance of, even a demand for, Jewish music such to the point where most performers there today aren’t even Jewish. (This is a whole other conversation actually, which gets it’s own muddled essay later.)

But here, like Krakow and Budapest and Beograd, I am now presented much like my Cherokee and Seminole classmates as the “noble savage” that can be accepted now up to a point simply because I no longer pose any threat. Lucky for the local toughs, they still have gypsies here that they can safely kick around, so finally the heat is off us Jews for once.

I’m chatting about these various observations with my good friend Brighton based clarinetist Merlin Shepherd who is on the bandstand with me tonight. Beating the heat, we stroll into the city square and find a seat at a pleasant café under the shadow of the great Orthodox Church. Speaking maybe a little too loudly in English, and being the only men with any facial hair that we have seen anywhere in town, we are certainly not from around here. Our young waitress brings us our coffee and inquires in her best English if we were here for the big festival. We said yes and that in fact we were performers, which seemed to excite her a great deal. “What do you play”” she inquires. Merlin responds matter-of-factly “Jewish and Gypsy Music.” To which our waitress literally recoils, whipping her hand over her mouth to cover her obvious shock. I can’t make this stuff up. “Is that a bad thing?” Merlin asks. “Oh no…” she says as she hurriedly shuffles away. “Was it the Jew thing or the Gypsy thing that got her?” I asked Merlin. We agree. It doesn’t really matter, does it?
Jews used to live here.

More pictures from Pohoda Festival

Great pictures of Frank London's Klezmer Brass All Stars set with Boban and Marko Markovic's Orkestar at the Pohoda Festival in Trencin Slovakia, 7/12/07

I'm in this picture, but hiding.


Dontcha just love those monster projection screens?


Frank London

Boban and Marko Markovic with Frank London


Marko rocking out.
Note western style piston trumpet and Merlin Shepherd and Matt Dariau eyes locked on him.

Triumphal bowing.

Pohoda Festival, Trencin Slovakia

After a week of rehearsing, gigging, drinking and enjoying the hospitality of Frank and Louie London it's off to Trencin Slovakia to perform at the Pohoda Music Festival with Frank's Klezmer Brass All Stars and Boban Markovic's Okestar. There's a lot to tell about this trip, but I'm not certain I can share it all. (Earlier in the week Frank laid a copy of Absursbistan on me and I must give it a hearty recommendation.)

Today I'm flying Czech Airways which means I'm assured to fly in a plane that Delta Airlines deemed unfit to fly many, many years ago. The only possible positive is that they still hand out free booze on board and I ask for a Becherovka and a Pivo. Only too late I remember that I hate that crap and coupled with a probably gamey tuna salad sandwich I am reduced to clutching the handy air sickness bag within a few hours. The only other event to report was the little old Czech-American lady who was so unhappy to be sitting next to a tattooed fat guy that she literally cried until they found her someplace else to sit. Fine by me as now I get an open seat for the 9 hour flight. I arrive at the Bratislava airport just in time to get in line behind the folks who came off an Air Kuwait flight. It's all turbans and burkhas and fat Okie in the passport line, which takes nearly 40 minutes to be processed by the surliest looking border cops I've even seen. After finding my horn has in fact arrived safely, I spy a friendly gal and a taciturn gent holding a sign with my name on it as finally get through the Nothing to Declare line and into the very hot airport.

Europe is experiencing a genuine killer heatwave this week and it's well over 40 degrees Celsius, which it pretty damn unbearably hot. Now, I'm from a place where it gets real hot too, but we are a Freon based society in Texas and you are never far from an AC unit. Not so much here, in fact, Slovakia has no AC period. As a fold up in the back of the Mercedes S Class cab, I make mental note to find a table fan somewhere. Additionally, I had assumed that I was to be staying in Bratislava for the night and had made plans to hook up for a hang with my old buddy Samo Alexander of the Pressburger Klezmer Band. I awake from my cab ride to find myself in Trencin, some 2 hours and in many respects, an entire world away. There is no phone at the hotel, nor is there one anywhere near there. And Internet connection? Yeah right. I have no way to signal my whereabouts to anyone, nor do I know when and where I need to be. In other words, I am right back in Eastern Europe. For me, it's the only vacation I ever get.

For reasons only my travel agent will be able to explain, I am here 2 days ahead of the event and will be departing a day after it's over. The plane (and bus as it turns out) tickets were the most expensive I've seen to date, and bear in mind I am traveling from NYC and not Texas this time. A lot of things happened while I was there. I played and hung out with trombonist Noah Bless and drummer Richie Barshay for the first time, as they were on this date and not familiar with the Brotherhood of Brass show. I got to stroll around quite a bit with Merlin Shepherd whose entertaining company I have missed a great deal. And I had my mind completely blown by a series of events that I am, for now, choosing not to share here. Rather I will simply give a quick photo play of the positives. Like food, which was uniformly trayf and wonderful.

Like many E. European hotels, it has a cafe attached and this trip food was on the Festival, so lunch and dinner were had quite handily.

Here's the house Garlic Soup, which has a chicken broth base rather than the creamier version I am used to. Big honking croutons and goat cheese to top it off. Followed by,

Chicken cutlets, lightly pan fried, covered in cheese and served on a bed of cucumber and tomato salad. It was listed as an appetiser, so I sprung for the french fries on the side. It was quite enough by itself however.

What you learn quickly when you travel over here is that the staples of the local diet, meats and vegetables, are just so much better than what you find back home. Here they are don't mess around with fancy antibiotics for the cattle, genetically altered grains or heavy pesticides. It's mostly "organic" by default. And people, here the simple flavor of a diced tomato just blows up in your mouth, and I mean that in a good way.

On to lunch the next day,

Evidently the locals like to stuff chicken breasts with all manner of things and then fry them. At the all night bar and grill down the road I treated clarinetist Matt Dariau (dude, you owe me) to a few rounds of Pilsner Urquell and a breaded, pan fried, chicken breast stuffed with cheese and sausage served with the ubiquitous cucumbers and tomatoes. Today back at the hotel I opt for a similar dish, this time stuffed with cheese and a pear. Not appetising on paper maybe but quite delicious I assure you.

Merlin went for the "Pork Parts Platter" as we called it.

This is indeed a Swine based food culture.

Random photo play:

On of several Slovakian youth seen adjusting their "Nigger" costume in anticipation of a set from the Wu Tang Clan. Please note actual black face.

There is so much more I could share about this sight and many others. I have in fact written it all down, but I'm not sure that I'm comfortable airing those experiences in a public forum. You may contact me offline should you wish to inquire further. Let's just say I'm not adding Slovakia to my travel plans again anytime soon.

Note please a damn decent Kolache served in the backstage area. This is the first kolache I've been presented with in it's native land and I must say the mix of cream cheese, poppy seed and cherry (the 3 customary fillings) all together in one serving was mighty fine indeed. Take note you bakers in Caldwell Texas for next years Kolache Festival.

Here I am meeting Mustapha, Boban's new bass man. My mentor Sasa Alisanovic has disappeared as if into the ether, and in an almost Mafia like silence no one will dare share with me the details. (Word on the street is that he has since returned to play for a rival group so that he can tour with his son, but it's all hearsay at this point.) The new kid is like every Serbian Rroma tuba player I've encountered, stunningly talented and funkier that the funkiest bass player you ever heard. He's nimble and facile, but he lacks the power and authority that Sascha threw down. I'm sad, but I'll give Mustapha a break as he's stepping into a giant's shadow.


Here's Marko Markovic jamming out with Nelle backstage. Yes, Matt, that's your clarinet, no he didn't ask your permission and that's what you get when you leave things laying about backstage at a Boban gig. BTW: Marko can kick ass on clarinet which is astounding when you realize what an incredible trumpeter he is.

Some pre-gig jamming backstage with Noah getting his first taste of the Boban i Marko throwdown.

Here's Richie with the giant projection screen behind him. The big round thing is Mustapha's Helicon bell which will be in my right ear all night. Did I mention they had smoke machine for the gig?
Here's what Richie had to contend with the whole gig long. He's in there, I promise, I could hear him....

Here's some of the estimated 20,000 folks who saw the show.

So we get a day to walk around the Festival, where I do eventually find Samo and spend an evening surveying the immense old Soviet era air force base that the festival is held on. (Samo is sweet kid and leads a great band. He's getting married soon as well. I wish I wasn't so out of it, but I did enjoy his company very much.) There are literally thousands of people set up in a huge tent village and as anyone who's been to Banaroo or some such will tell you, these people have to shit someplace. I blow my last Slovak Crowns on a Klobasa and Fries, check out Konono No. 1's amazing set and find a driver to take me back to the hotel.

We are to be picked up at said hotel at 5am so we be driven across the border into the Czech Republic to catch a Czech Airways Bus from Brno to Prague. No problem really, except for the wedding party that is going on across the Vaha River from our hotel. It's a traditional Slovak affair complete with I'd reckon a 15 piece brass band. They are pumping polkas and waltzes, all sing a longs evidently, until 4:45 am I shit you not. Now, I personally would have gone over and joined in the festivities, but the only bridge to cross the river was nearly 2 miles away and they would have wrapped up before I even got there, I imagined. So, I stay up and meet the driver.

Along with Noah and Richie, we pile into the Mercedes and peel out into the Slovak countryside which is in a word breathtaking. A short stop at the border and we're off to Brno at what looks to be just in time to comfortably make the bus. Our driver pulls into the Brno Civic bus station at precisely 7:15 am, helps us take our stuff out and bid farewell as he must do this all over again for someone else.

Something tells me that we're not at the right place, so I rush over to the ticket counter. Nobody speaks English, but when I wave my ticket at them they say "City Zetrum, Hotel Grand, that way" pointing north. Oh crap. We have but 15 minutes to find the City Center and the the Hotel Grand. I hassle a cabbie in my worst German and he says it's about 10 minutes walk, head north. If I had either Slovak Crown or Euro I would have employed him. But no, we sprint as fast as our luggage (I'm hauling a tuba remember) will allow. I tell Richie, the smallest and most fit of our party to haul ass ahead. Through combined effort we suss out both the City Center and then the Hotel Grand, across from which we see a whole other bus stop and one with a gleaming new Czech Airways bus idling. We rush up to the open door just in time to hear the last call, stuff our gear into the overstuffed compartments, give our tickets to the stewardess (yes, on a bus, she served us drinks and a snack as well) and collapse into the last 3 open seats. The stops on the way out of town and drops off the stewardess and we're off to the Prague Airport. I fall asleep, for the first time on a moving vehicle in a long time.

I awake to find us at the Airport, but arriving right at the time we should be boarding. Another series of combined sprinting and hauling and we find ourselves at the ticket counter. Richie is cool and get's checked in. I have no hassle. But Noah's ticket isn't there. In the confusion of being late, the bus stewardess has taken Noah's Flight Coupon rather than his bus ticket! Most places this is a no-brainer, as all his info in in the computer and it's a non-problem. But here is Former Sovietistan, 13 years after the wall falls and they still can't move or even think without consulting a supervisor. This too wouldn't be an issue, except OUR PLANE IS BOARDING. Long, upsetting story short, he's issued a boarding pass and we're all on the plane. Again, for the first time in my life, I fall soundly asleep on the plane. This time passing on the crappy local booze and the tuna salad.

When I return to JFK I realize I had not made any arrangements to crash with anybody and I can't get anybody on the phone. As hot and tired as I was I make the decision to simply hit a hotel near the airport, loathe though I am to afford such. I negotiate a price with a Best Western, check in, set the AC to "stun," called out for a pizza and slept 18 hours. Recharged and refreshed, I set out to the Workman's Circle building to stash my horn at the Living Traditions basement office and seek out something to do before I headed off to Block and Hexter for the KlezKamp Roadshow.

I headed off to Brooklyn, a place I didn't know so well, even having played for it's celebration of late.I am grateful to the Sokolov-Gottesman's for putting me up in Brooklyn and for a pleasant dinner with Joey Weisenberg. And to Matt Moran who took me out for a drink and live music even after attending the memorial of his good friend. On Tuesday, I observed Tish B'Av by reading magazines at the Barnes and Noble and then seeing "Live Free or Die Harder" at the neighborhood cinema.

It's a good time as any to reflect that the things we may have around us pale in the comparison of the friends and relationships we form. Away from Texas and my relatively comfortable surroundings I note that it is only through my friends that I have been able to experience the things I have. Those experiences and those friends made along the way are more dear to me than any thing I could possibly posses.

May I also share with you this little secret. If I should, heaven forbid, pass from this Earth for any reason anytime soon, I want anybody reading this to know well that I have had a wonderful time and it's all OK. No, really, it's been a solid blast. I may be broke without a pot to piss in, but screw it, the saddest folks I know have plenty of money. My version of a mid-life crisis now is that I need new goals, as all of my goals up to now have been attained. And that, friends, are the words of a very, very lucky man.

Confronting Institutionalized Anti-Semitism with Laughter

I mean, really, what else can you do?

One of the highlights/low points of shopping in the old city center of Krakow Poland is being confronted with little carved figurines of the traditional Polish depiction of a Jew: a hook nose Hassid counting gold. The Poles for their part simply explain that it's a symbol of good luck and abundance. Like when a merchant frames his first dollar, Poles will give a new couple or a new business a little Jew doll clutching a bag of gold as an expression of good fortune.




Uh huh.

So popular these little dolls that now they even have mass produced plastic versions with the phrase "Na Kase" (to the bank) emblazoned on them. I choose one of these, and a ridiculous local folk dress hat, as my souvenirs. I guess to be somewhat generous, to be anti-Semitic formally, you would need Jews around in the first place and that question has been handily settled, not but 30 km from the center of Krakow in fact. I highly doubt that I could get away with a displaying a drunk Mexican doll at my place of business, but actually I do recall buying such from a street vendor in Piedras Negras once. Whatever, it's still creepy and the only response I can muster today is laughter.

As it happens, the little plastic Jew I picked out bears more than a passing resemblance to reed man Alex Kontorovich. Backstage before the big concert, and single Grosz in hand, he deigns to pose with the doll for Lorin Sklamberg's camera. Witness:

A good likeness, no?

Well, we all gleefully gather around the display of Lorin's digital camera to see the results, when the Festival's staff photographer snaps this candid shot:


Can he know what we looking at? Can he know what is going through our minds, especially the fat dude in the funny local hat? Why are we laughing? To keep from crying maybe?

The folks who run the Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow who are putting on this shindig are wonderful. Moreover they have made amazingly great strides in reminding their countrymen of the integral and vibrant Jewish community that once thrived there for centuries. But as long as there's a picture of a Jew counting gold inside every Money Exchange counter ("Kantor," not Cantor, dig?) and you can buy these insulting figurines, and moreover you see no problem with it, then there's quite a bit more inner work to be done in Poland.

Amen.

In those Oklahoma Hills where I was born....

Folks, I am not a big "letter to the editor" writer but I felt compelled to chime in on this little piece that a fellow emailed me. First read the article, then read my letter. Or not. It's all my own mishegoss really:


Dear Editor,

I was just today directed to your article dated Dec. 8th in reference to the opening of a Hillel Foundation at OSU.

I myself was born and raised in Stillwater where my father Robert Rubin was at varying times the Executive Director of Kappa Kappa Psi National Marching Band Fraternity, head of the OSU International Student Association and for many years the announcer for the mighty Cowboy Marching Band. We were also at the time (1961-1976) one of the few practicing Jewish families in Stillwater or at the University.

To clarify Dr. Gethner's point: “A decision was made about 50 years ago not to ask the SGA for money, due to the anti-Semitism in the air at the time.” That "air" was in fact the same I took my first breaths with. I can speak with pointed experience that unabashed anti-Semitism was a part of daily life growing up there as late as the 1970's, ranging in exposure from the personal to the institutional. From no admission to the local Country Club or fraternal orders, to Protestant Christian doctrine taught daily in the public schools, to swastikas painted on the family home's door and odd brick thrown through the window emblazed with "Juden Gerauch." The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was available free of charge at the barber shop on 6th Street where I got my first haircut, and on more than one occasion I was asked by my more devout Christian school mates to show them my horns.

Now, it wasn't simply Jews singled out for abuse mind you, this xenophobia extended to anyone outside of the "traditional American" mold. I recall with great sadness that the children of Hindu and Pakistani OSU students where routinely singled out for ridicule and exclusion in the playgrounds of Married Student housing. As were young Native Americans who were yearly forced to dress up as settlers and re-enact the Great Land Rush at school. (Which would essentially be like asking me to dress up in a brown shirt and armband and re-enact Krystalnacht once a year.) Catholics were regularly referred to as "Papists," and it was years until I understood that N-----r was a epithet, having hearing it so often in passing reference to an African American.


Not Borat from Khazakstan. But not so long ago in Payne County OK, USA.

True enough as your writer points out, it was a long way to the synagogues in OKC, Tulsa and even Ponca City where we would gather with the small congregations of dairy farmers, educators and small business owners who made up the Jewish community of my youth. Many of who had only a few decades earlier fled the unspeakable horrors of wartime a Europe only to find the same simplistic prejudices set firmly into the social fabric of small town Oklahoma. Many of these folks, one of whom had as a young man personally funded the establishment of the first Christian Church building in Stillwater, had grown too old to safely travel for services. (A conundrum when you note it's strictly forbidden to travel or work on the Jewish Sabbath, but the desire to worship with fellow believers so strong as to allow a slight bending of the rules.) At bare minimum, most felt completely placed entirely apart from their "gentile" neighbors. For these reasons my father decided to hold regular services there for the faithful in Stillwater in a spare room of the Methodist Student Association, a example of Christian charity and kindness that will be long remembered.

That was until late 1976 when my father was approached to re-open the defunct Hillel Foundation at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where he served as Director and small "r" rabbi of the Jewish Community there until his passing in 1982. We left OSU and Stillwater and I have never, ever returned. Yes, we found a home in Sooner Land. And say what you will about OU, but no one ever called me a "kike" in Norman.

In conclusion I wish to heartily applaud the efforts of those who wish to revive Hillel at OSU. And pray that, baruch hashem (God willing,) we all work to grow away our bigotry and promote understanding and tolerance wherever we are. Maybe someday I can free myself from own personal biases and again feel welcome to visit the town where I was born.

With respect,


Mark Rubin

Austin TX