FRANK LONDON ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney. Today is August 24th, 2011. I'm here at KlezKanada with Frank London. We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Frank, do I have your permission to record this interview?

FRANK LONDON: You have my permission to record it. What you do with it, we'll talk about later. But you have your permission to record it.

CW: Okay. Can you briefly tell me about what you know about your family background, how they got to this country and where they lived before?

FL: Yes. I don't have really extensive knowledge of Old World family. My family 1:00on both my mother's and my father's side was very disjointed and tragic and of the type of Jewish families that avoids talking about things kind of in a compulsive, we don't talk about things kind of way. So, I really have very little knowledge. And a few of the people -- both my grandfathers, who are my closest family, actually aren't my direct relatives. So, they were later marriages. So, what I do know more or less is that Bessie Weisberg, my grandmother -- that was her first married -- no, that was her second married name. Bessie Wessler was her first married name. What was her maiden name? Gotta find out. My maternal -- maternal, maternal -- grandmother's side were in this country for quite a long time. I'm guessing, I don't know, but from my 2:00guesswork, they must have come from the big waves of immigration in the 1880s or so. Because she even was born in this country. So -- and lived in Connecticut. So, that part of the family -- and they were longtime Reform Jews, so I don't know if -- what that says about where their family might have come from, but -- so that part of the family is really longtime USA, at least, you know, on that minimum -- minimum third, if not fourth-generation. On my father's side, from what I know -- and again, it's all very spotty -- Shmuel or Steve London, my father's father, who I never met, 'cause he died well before I was born. I think he -- was he an immigrant or was he born in this country? Either he or Harry was 3:00born in -- was the immigrant. So, I'm either second- or third-generation on my father's father's side. And my father's mother's side -- which is a really, actually, fun lineage, but it's more about this country or this world but not the Old World -- the Darachinksy family, who became the Darrow family, who have this great story about -- and again, we're talking late nineteenth century -- who came to New York, didn't like the city, and walked from New York City up to -- as far as they could get, which at that time was Newburgh, New York. And so, the -- and we have the archives of my great- or great-- no, my -- yeah, my great-great aunt, who wa-- they walked up to Newburgh, which is -- what is that, seventy miles? And then, they settled there -- they thought that would look nice 4:00-- and started Darrow Brothers Clothing Store. And I keep on -- as my life goes on, it never stops, the connections I meet to people who know about Darrow Brothers Clothing Store. In fact, to bring you around to Yiddish stuff, I'm working on a new Yiddish opera, based on a text by Ascher Penn, "Hatuey," about a Taino Indian chief. And one of the people in our production team, the fundraiser of it, lives up in that part of the world. So, he's like -- we're working together on this Yiddish opera, and we're just talking. We had just met recently. And he actually was the person who found my uncle in the Darrow Brothers Clothing Store as he had a heart attack and died. And this -- he was working -- he lived there and had worked next door or something like that, and he came over to maybe get a cup of coffee or something. He's telling me this 5:00story. We just met. 'Cause -- and I mentioned Darrow Brothers, and his face went ashen, and he's like, "But I was there. I was holding your uncle when he died." So, for some reason the -- and the Darrow Brothers -- and then I was doing a Brazilian music gig, and the piano player, Luiz Simas, his wife -- you know, this Brazilian jazz player and his wife and I are talking, and she grew up in that town. And she's like, "Oh no, I grew up -- my father had the Italian diner, and I -- me and your cousin, Frankie --" I was Little Frankie, and the other cousin was Big Frank -- and she goes, "Me and your cousin would run around in the street for days." So, for some reason, the Darrow family up in Newburgh and Beacon, it's the same town, across the bridge -- seems to be the one that has the most stories. But in terms of -- getting back to the point. I'm so US, I'm third-, fourth-generation. Grew up I would say with -- to say zero Yiddish is 6:00only slightly exaggerating. I really don't remember -- there was not the Yiddish as a hidden language from my parents. No. If anything, they sort of spoke a horrible German that they'd both learned in college to -- as their hidden language, and that didn't even work.

CW: Were there any phrases that you remember being thrown around?

FL: Nothin'. The only Yiddish -- or even Jewish cultural artifacts of my life before I left the house when I was, like, eighteen -- and this went on to my adult life -- the only ones -- 'cause I've thought about this a lot because I've spent the last thirty-five years in Yiddish cultural world: where did it come from? My grandfather, Lou Weisberg, my mother's mother's second husband, owned a 7:00delicatessen in Brooklyn Heights. And another fun point, when I'm talking to old New Yorkers, 'cause they all know the Plymouth Deli and -- so in -- but that -- even growing up in the '60s, that was a very multicultural place. 'Cause Chico -- which I didn't realize meant "boy"; I thought it was just Chico -- was the -- worked there. And when I used to run deliveries and price the items, I would work with Chico and Vera, the Italian lady and the Puerto Ri-- so it was very multicultural place for its time. It wasn't a particularly -- but he was the old Jewish guy, I realized, you know, with his big, fat cigar, walking around. So, culturally -- and of course, the food, although it wasn't kosher or even kosher-style, it was still, you know -- we grew up with salami and roast meat and pastrami and this, 'cause he was in the deli business. So, in a weird culinary cultural way, that was it. And then, there were two items in my 8:00household growing up: a copy of Leo -- it's the same guy, but I forget what his name -- the guy who wrote "The Joys of Yiddish" -- Leo Rosten? But he had -- that's -- he has two names. I forget. He wrote "The Miseducation of Hyman Kaplan." Do you know this book? Okay, you actually have to read this book. It was probably in every Jewish American household in the '50s, '40s? It is -- it's terrible. It's great; it's genius; it's terrible. It's the wor-- it's all about this Jewish immigrant who goes to night -- adult, goes to night school in a class with Chinese and all these other immigrants and, you know, Hispa-- and everything, trying to learn English, and all the mistakes he makes. It's kind of a weird classic of immigrant literature. So, and he always spells his names with little asterisks between every letter. So, it's asterisk H, asterisk Y, the -- 9:00Hyman Kaplan. I mean, it's really bad. It's great. It's absolute classic, and it has to be read to understand the certain kind of mentality of a certain time and place. So, that was one, "Miseducation of Hyman Kaplan." And a 45 RPM single, you know, in the box that I sort of found once I became seven, with the Beatles singles from my brother, and Herman's Hermits, which I was into and stuff like that -- was one Mickey Katz single. But it wasn't even one of his klezmer Yiddish-y ones. It was his parody on the popular song "You Belong to Me," which he just did in this weird Yiddish accent. (sings in accent) "Take a choo-choo train to Casablanky. There you'll find a continental Yankee. You belong to me, yeah?" And so, those two things were the only -- and my grandfather's deli -- were the only -- and it's only in retrospect that I can see them as what they 10:00were. They were just things that were around the house, and I didn't know why. Now, we had a Jewish upbringing, but it was an American, suburban, Reform Jewish upbringing, which was -- had its religious element but none of the cultural or linguistic signifiers.

CW: So, when did you start playing music?

FL: At nine years old. Because in my country, there was a time -- I'm being such a facetious jerk -- when there was a thing called public funding for art in the schools. And when you were in fourth grade they said, What instrument would you like to play? And they gave you a choice of instruments. And I took trumpet.

CW: How'd you choose trumpet?

FL: Randomly. I think Big Frank -- my cousin Big Frank -- he was a trumpet player, and I sort of looked up to him. In fact, my first trumpet was his hand-me-down.

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CW: And then, what was the music that you were playing as you were starting to learn?

FL: Two types: the compulsory music that they make you play in school -- you know, band music -- and rock and roll.

CW: And was --

FL: And then, eventually as I got slightly better, went from rock and roll -- we also played, like, little classical music, and we would go around with a brass quartet in the middle of winter in December, Christmas caroling to make money from the Christians in the neighborhood. And playing Christmas carols with icicles literally dripping from our spit valves. It was very -- it felt so Old World, you know, the icicle on your horn. It was very cute.

CW: And was there other music around in the home when you were growing up?

FL: Other than rock and roll?

CW: I mean, what was the music in your home?

FL: I listened to nothing but rock. That was it. And my parents kind of listened 12:00mostly to what you would call either Muzak or easy listening music. Enoch Light and the Light Orchestra. Yeah, really the most banal -- I mean, I have a very wide knowledge of the standard popular music of the '20s, '30s, and '40s because of this -- the only thing that was slightly, slightly hip is at dinnertime sometimes, my parents -- or my father -- would turn on the radio station, WRVR, broadcast from the Riverside Chapel, which was an all-jazz station. And they had this guy who I realized was somewhere between a total beatnik and a stoner, but I didn't realize that growing up, named Ed Beach. And he had -- what was his name -- I should know this. This is, like, big history. Jazz something with Ed Beach. And they had a Wes Montgomery intro. (sings) So, that was my only, only introduction to any sort of interesting music, was listening to WRVR on the 13:00radio at dinner until my family imploded when I was around thirteen or fourteen, and that was the end of family dinners. (laughs) So, yeah.

CW: And can you tell me a little bit about your education? Did you go to -- what kind of schools did you go to?

FL: Public school. Public secular school. Long Island public secular school. And then, I went -- spent one year in a university and then transferred from there and spent the following three years at music school at New England Conservatory in the late 1970s.

CW: So, can you tell me a little bit about that time, at the conservatory? What were you studying?

FL: Yeah, I could tell you a lot. But why don't you ask some more -- I mean, 'cause, you know, you don't need to know about quarter-tone studies with (Whitney laughs) Joe Maneri or counterpoint --

CW: Well, I mean, how did you get into --

FL: Yeah. Yeah, right.

CW: -- the conservatory band that --

FL: Oh! How did I get into the conserv-- oh, the Klezmer Conservatory --

CW: Klezmer Conservatory Band.

FL: Okay, the -- okay. So, on that New England Conservatory -- and I hope this all jibes -- it should jibe exactly with what Hankus Netsky tells you, otherwise one of us is having a revisionist history moment. But it should be more or less the same with slight -- just slight perspective differences. The program we were in, which was called third-stream music at the time -- it's now called creative improvisation -- or contemporary improvisation, I can never remember -- CI -- believed in looking at all music in the world. Basically, what happened was once I got to conservatory, I went from listening to nothing but rock and roll to listening to everything in the world. Anything was fair game. And if it had a trumpet in it, it was even better. So, I was listening to everything and studying everything and playing everything, in school, out of school. I got my degree in Afro-American music performance and -- blah. And they would do theme 15:00concerts. And the theme concert -- it was either '79, '80, or '81; it's gotta be in that three-year period -- I'm gonna go on a limb and say 1980, but whatever -- was Jewish music. And Hankus, who had known about this Jewish instrumental and vocal music from his family, put together a group of mostly students -- some non-students, but people in the community -- to perform three songs on this concert of Jewish music. And I'm pretty sure those three songs were "Lebedik un freylik [Lively and happy]" -- "Rumenye, rumenye [Romania, Romania]," -- and maybe one more. I should be -- some Itzikl Kramtweiss thing. "Kleyne printsesin [Little princess]." I might be wrong, but I'm gonna say that. We can check with Hankus. Two klezmer instrumentals, one Yiddish vocal song. We performed these three songs in, let's say, roughly 1980, in a concert of Jewish music, which had 16:00all sorts of other things going on. And from these three songs, we actually got asked to play concerts. And we're like, But we aren't even a band, and we know three songs, and we're just beginning to listen to this music that no-- well, most of us didn't know. A couple of people -- Hankus knew it. Judy Bressler had grown up in a family, so she had some Yiddish -- have you interviewed Judy or someone? I'm sure they have. I'm sure she -- they're in the archives. So, they -- a few people had some connection. But most of us had never heard of it. It was just another interesting music to study. And that group of people who played in that concert -- so you have a gig, so you have to learn a repertoire; you need a name of a band. And so, the name the Klezmer Conservatory Band got given to that group of people who had played those three songs in that concert. And 17:00then, we made a whole repertoire and started doing concerts.

CW: And what did you think of Jewish music when you first started listening to it?

FL: Well, I'm gonna take your question literally. What I thought of Jewish music when I first started listening to it is, This is the most sappy, horrible, waste of time junk I've ever heard. And to go another step, I didn't think about it, 'cause it wasn't worth thinking about. But what you're missing is the first Jewish music I heard was not this klezmer stuff in 1979 or '80 from these old recordings; the first Jewish music I heard was the stuff when we went to temple. And that was just like, bad singers doing amateur choral versions of bad Israeli stuff. Why would I even want to listen to that in the slightest? I wouldn't. You 18:00know. And, I mean -- and most of the music in our temple was of that kind of quasi-Germanic Protestant liturgy that was endemic in 1960s Reform American temples. I mean, all I remember is sitting there next to my brother, who's a couple years older than me. At the end of the service, which we were bored terribly, at the (sings) "Ushemo, ushemo, ushemo echad [Hebrew: And his name, and his name, and his name is one]," poking each other, going, "You're a schmo, you're a schmo." I guess that's a Yiddish word. I didn't know that. Schmo. Right? Is it? Is schmo a Yiddish --

CW: Well, the "sch--" is.

FL: Schmo.

CW: Yeah.

FL: You're a schmo. Shmendrik [Fool]. I mean, it's not an English word; "you're a schmo." So, that's -- that was Jewish music that I first heard and not worth talking about.

CW: And then, when you started listening to klezmer music?

FL: I said -- well, the first klezmer I heard was in preparation for that concert. And we got these cassettes of old -- of transfers of old 78s, of Abe 19:00Ellstein, Itzikl Kramtweiss -- these early orchestras. And I said, "Wow! This is really great music." So, I was very -- you know. And at that point, like I said, I was discovering all the great music of the world. And so, it was right up there. I mean, I guess there was maybe one degree of, Well, that's cool that Jewish music is on the list of great musics with Haitian music and Balkan music and Charles Ives and Charlie Parker. It was nice to know that it wasn't, like, all that stuff and then (sings) "Ushemo, ushemo, ushemo echad."

CW: Can you just give me a snapshot of the projects you're working on right now?

FL: (laughs) Trying to get through this week. I'm artistic coordinator of KlezKanada this year, for the first time. Trying to get through this week without many disasters. And then, after this I go down to Montreal, perform with Hasidic New Wave, which is a band that's been together for about fifteen, twenty 20:00years, which is basically an avant-garde jazz group that uses as its sort of unifying factor Hasidic wedding and spiritual music, but is much broader than that. So, I'll do a Hasidic New Wave concert. Then, I drive overnight, teach world music at Purchase University, SUNY Purchase. Then, I fly to Warsaw. I'm doing three projects at the Singer Festival. I'm doing a production of my version of -- it's an adaptation of Peretz's "Bay nakht afn altn mark," which is called "Night in the Old Marketplace," which we did at MASS MoCA earlier this year. I don't know if you came up from the Book Center; some people did. So, it's a multimedia musical theater piece based on the Peretz. Then, we're doing a Tsuker-Zis nigunim [melodies] -- electric Hasidic nigunim project, which is a small group with Lorin Sklamberg, who's my partner in the Klezmatics. And we do 21:00these small groups based on Hasidic music. So, that's Tsuker-Zis, which is kind of a line out of a Hasidic nigun which says, you know, "Undzer leybn iz tsuker-zis [Our life is as sweet as sugar]" -- "We do all these great Jewish things -- we put on tefillin. We daven. And we're so happy to be Jews, and our life is as sweet as sugar." And then, also I'm doing a Klezmer Brass Allstar special concert at that festival with Christian Dawid and my Frank London Klezmer Brass Allstars. Then, from there I fly over to Israel. I'm meeting a band called Marsh Dondurma, which seems to have a good reputation as sort of the Balkan anarchist ska brass band. And I'm guest artist with them. I'll play some of their music; they'll play some of my music. I just wrote a new composition for them entitled "Waiting for Godot in Jenin," which is a reaction to the -- this weird situation with the Freedom Theatre, an amazing political theater 22:00company in the West Bank, in the occupied territories, whose founding director was murdered. And he was a -- he's mixed, from Arab Jewish family, and they -- it's a question who murdered him. And then, the Israeli defenses, instead of -- well, I don't want to say the odds they say -- from what we see, what they're doing is arresting members of the theater. And they were putting on a production of "Waiting for Godot." They haven't caught his murderer, but they're trashing the theater itself and arresting people, including the managing director and the actor who's playing Pozzo in "Waiting for Godot." And I thought, This is an amazing political statement, to be in the middle -- 'cause one of the worst, dehumanizing things about the situation in the territories is the waiting, waiting, waiting to get across cross-points, checkpoints. The Palestinians are made to wait, wait, wait. They lose half their life waiting in lines to get from point A to point B. And so, for them to put on "Waiting for Godot" and this is 23:00so radical -- and it -- I don't know this for a fact, but it feels like, and that so scares the Israelis as a political, artistic statement that they have to arrest the members of this theater company. So, it's very weird. So then, I do that. Then, I go back to New York. I usually can't think more than three weeks ahead because there's too many crazy things. I know I'm going to Brazil. I'm the artistic director in one of those where I don't have to do anything except give them my photo -- artistic director of Kleztival in São Paulo. I have to write a multicultural symphony for the Queens Symphony Orchestra with a soloist. I've got to work on the new Yiddish opera project, do fundraising for that. I'm -- prepare for the Babel/Ashkenaz project. And of course, there's the Klezmatics, which, thank God, always exists and does tours and concerts and -- I'm sure there's more. And then, of course, get my kids through high school and into 24:00college and -- yeah.

CW: So, how do you fi-- how do you get into new projects? I mean, what is the process? Just meeting people at festivals?

FL: Dreaming.

CW: How do you come up with it, and -- I mean, where do you get your inspiration for a new project?

FL: Wherever it happens to be. I think it's just about openness and just receptivity. I had often thought conceptually -- I mean, sometimes it -- I think I probably react more intellectually than emotionally. So, I intellectually thought, You know, I need to write a Yiddish opera. Oh, I'm doing a lot of work with khazones [Jewish liturgical music]. That's another one of my big obsession, in its traditional and radical forms. And I know the connection -- well, I said 25:00that now, but we'll come back to it, or not. So, I said, "I have to write a Yiddish opera." It just felt like it's necessary. And we could talk about why. 'Cause I think that gets to the heart of my relationship to Yiddish and the relationship of many of the artists and activists in our world to Yiddish. So, maybe --

CW: Sure.

FL: -- that would be something to really talk about. But just to finish this thing -- so I -- but I -- the thing about Yiddish and writing a Yiddish opera, the number of people actually write in Yiddish, write new material, is really limited. It's a very small pool. And I know every one of them. Or -- no. That's an exaggeration. I know many of them. I don't know everyone. There's many more, thank God. Really more. But, you know. So, when I wanted to, with the Klezmatics, write the first Yiddish song about smoking pot, I went to Michael Wex, and we -- and he wrote the words, and I wrote the music, and we collaborated. And it was great, 'cause we had to find the terminology for what do you call it, and what -- are we using politi-- historical references, which 26:00there are? Hankus got me a book as a birthday gift, I think for my fiftieth birthday, from the Book Center, a copy of the book "Hashish." Oh, I -- it should be "Hashish," 'cause it's right to left, you know? So, it's -- certainly this was in the lexicon, but he had to make up lots of words. So, my point is, when we need to write something new we go to the -- these experts. But hard to get a really new Yiddish theater piece. So, I'm always looking for -- keeping my ear open for texts. And I encounter many things that don't work. What's his name? Who wrote "Moshiach in America"? I'll think of his name. You know, there's a lot of great stuff out there that needs to be uncovered and worked with. But in this case -- so I was at -- unfortunately, tragically -- a memorial service for Jonathan Wolken, who was one of the choreographers and founders of Pilobolus Dance Theater. And I had composed new music for a piece called "Davening" for 27:00the Klezmatics and Pilobolus. And the dramaturg on the project was Michael Posnick, who's a wonderful theater/dance artist and teacher. And he gave one of the eulogies at Jonathan Wolken's funeral, or at the service, at the memorial service. And afterwards, I was hanging out with Michael and his wife, Eileen, and we're talking, and somehow it comes out that his father-in-law, Eileen's father, was a big Yiddishist, huge. And he had written, among other things, in Cuba -- as he was leaving Cuba to come to the US -- this epic poem, "Hatuey" -- or "Atuey." We're still trying to figure out the pronunciation, 'cause in Spanish it would be "atwey," but in Yiddish it's got the hey, so I'm not sure if it's "Hatuey" -- we're working on it. An epic poem about a Taino Indian chief who led the first armed uprising against the conquistadores in the sixteenth 28:00century, and who's famous for doing that. He's the first pre-Cuban revolutionary hero. He lost terribly. They killed him. And as he's about to be burnt on the stake, the priest says, "Accept Christ, and you'll go to heaven." And he goes, "And will you all be in heaven, you people, when you die?" They go, Of course. He goes, "Well, then I'll go to the other place." So, he's a famous hero. So, Ascher Penn, this guy who as a young child escaped the Ukraine, escaped the Soviet Union and the pogroms, in the most horrible way got out, got to Cuba, lived, like, from a -- being a teenager to a young man in Cuba. Then, as he's coming to New York, and -- he says -- he writes this poem as his homage to his second fatherland, Cuba. And he writes this poem about Hatuey, this hundred-page epic Yiddish poem. Which is so intense. I mean, he talks about the white people, 29:00"Di vayse, di vayse [The white people, the white people]." "Los blancos [Spanish: The white people]." All they care about is gold. They only want gold. They're -- the blood -- they spill blood everywhe-- it's a horrific story. And then -- and he writes this. And so, her father wrote this. And they're telling me about it. I'm like, "Well, this is the source of the libretto for my Yiddish opera. It's got to be. It's so epic and powerful." And so, we've been working on that. (laughs) I had this dream. It turns out it's not true. Because for -- he wrote it in Yiddish; it was translated into Spanish. And my -- I'm much more literate in Spanish than in Yiddish -- much more. Much more literate in Spanish than Yiddish. So, I was reading the Spanish. And he's like, "Los blancos, los blancos. And I had this dream that in Yiddish it was like, "Di goyim, di goyim [The non-Jews, the non-Jews]." But it's not. It's "di vayse." You know, "the white people." Which led us to a very interesting -- we had a symposium at Yale 30:00about the text. And one question that came up is did -- this guy's name was -- it was Oscar Pinis -- Pinis. Pinis. And I think his wife said, "I'm not gonna be Mrs. Pinis." So, they became Ascher Penn. He became Ascher Penn. And he wrote "Yidishkayt in amerike [Jewishness in America]," which is a huge compendium of life -- all the different Jewish groups in America. He wrote "Di shif-builder's lid [The ship-builder's song]" 'cause he was a shipbuilder. And this is his poetic poems -- that's stupid, "poetic poem" -- his poems about building ships. He wrote "Hatuey" and a couple oth-- and he was an editor for -- he founded "Havaner lebn," the Cuban Jewish news -- Yiddish newspaper. And then -- and he was an editor -- he worked on many -- he worked at the "Tog." I've been having these discussions. He was an editor for the "Forverts," but really he worked for the "Tog," and it seems like the "Tog" was a much more happening paper back in 31:00the day. I don't know. I shouldn't say that on the archive, 'cause I don't know it. This is hearsay. Forget about it. So -- "Hatuey" -- oh, and so one of the things is we -- oh, so the first we asked ourselves the question, Did Ascher Penn and did Jews at that point who ran away from the czar and lived -- did they consider themselves white? As he's writing this vitriolic screed against -- of course, it's the Spanish conquistadores, but the white -- does he think he's white? And I mean, I don't know -- we don't know, but I think the consensus feeling is no, an immigrant Yid of that period does not think of themselves as a white person. So, it's interesting the way this text leads us to those questions. And then, the other thing we all ask ourselves, the obvious question, Why does this guy leaving Cuba, this Russian Jew who has these stories about his 32:00friends -- seeing his friends, his eight-year-old friends' heads getting chopped off by the Cossacks, and his family saying, We're getting the heck out of here -- why does he choose to write this story? And so, my answer, which seems maybe facile, but, you know, you gotta go at it somewhere, is that it's a way of talking about -- obliquely -- about the Jewish fate, you know, of being totally slaughtered for your courage, for your convictions, for your culture, for your property, just for being who you are, being slaughtered. So, it's kind of an analogy that resonates with the Cubans and the world. And the last stanza of the poem are an amazing -- as Hatuey's dead, you know, but his indomitable spirit lives on. And it reflects that kind of intense -- sociopolitical, spiritual love 33:00that the Yiddish socialists -- all the writers -- my favorite writer, David Edelstadt, who wrote all the great Yiddish socialist anthems -- that they have for social justice. And they really have a deep passion for it when they write. It's a true love about the indominability [sic] -- "indomina--" is that a word? (whispers) "Indominability?" -- the indominatible nature of the human spirit and the human soul. And the universality of that. And how there's always oppression. There's always oppression against the people who try to make the world a better place, who try to do the right thing. And it's particular but it's universal, and that this struggle is the universal struggle. And so, that's in the poem. And so, that's why we think that he chose this story. And our intention is to have a framing story about the guy and how he got there told in Spanish, which 34:00will go to the Yiddish when we start telling the story of the Taino Indian. So -- I don't know why we're talking about this, but -- yeah.

CW: Cool.

FL: Yeah.

CW: So, where -- I mean, how -- in terms of -- I know that you work on all of these things, so it's hard to know exactly what direction to go in. But I know that one thing you've done is spent a lot of time transcribing Yiddish and Jewish music. How -- I mean, what -- was there anything you came upon that was, like, a moment of epiphany or a real change that led you in a direction towards --

FL: Many. There were many of those moments. I mean, the first time hearing these klezmer recordings from Hankus -- '79, '80, '81, whatever year we decide it is 35:00-- and saying, Oh, that's not like anything I ever expected, not like anything I ever heard. That was a real epiphany, just -- playing at Hasidic weddings, starting in New York in the mid-'80s, when I moved to New York, and hanging out with Hasids and singing and learning their music, and not just the schlock and contemporary stuff, but the real -- the nigunim -- was a real -- I mean, we're talking Jewish music. I'm not gonna get into listening to Max Roach and Booker Little now, are we? We're talking Jewish music? So, the -- so I would say the introduction to klezmer through the old recordings, total epiphany. The introduction to Hasidic music. And lastly -- and it's interesting that two of the three comes from or through Hankus. I hated cantorial music 'cause of what I 36:00grew up with, which was A, either nothing, or what little there was was terrible. So, there was -- and I usually -- and I hate opera, and I hate vibratos and all this stuff. And -- but I knew intellectually that cantorial music -- khazones or khazanut, khazones, is kind of a deep-rooted relationship to klezmer and Yiddish music. And so, I knew I should look at it. But I wasn't finding the thing that was connecting me. And Hankus gave me a recording of Alter Karniol doing "Avinu malkeinu [Hebrew: Our father, our king]." And Karniol is interesting because he's -- he was called Alter -- well, okay. His name -- he's called Alter Karniol. Either his name was Alter, which is one possibility -- I've heard that story -- but I've also heard that -- he was already old. He was like, in his seventies when recording is invented. So, even though he's being recorded in the teens or the '20s, we're hearing the nineteenth century. 37:00So, the other story I've heard is that "Alter" mean-- is like "Old man Karniol." So, I'm not sure if that's his name or if -- "Old guy." 'Cause he was, at that point, the old guy. But in any case, you're really hearing a throwback. And he's more -- in a weird way, more of a ba'al tefillah [Hebrew: prayer leader] than a khazn [synagogue cantor]. But that's another discussion. And this was the first thing that blew my mind in cantorial music. So, that was an epiphany. And I guess the fourth one is much -- is more recent, in the last five years or so, as I've started to listen to a lot of Arabic music and get into makam theory and starting to study all the non-Ashkenazic -- well, no, actually it's even related, because there is microtonality, especially in the khazones. There's a lot of it, and it relates to the Arabic modes and makam. But listening to all the different Oriental, Mizrahi, Sephardic, whatever -- I -- there's not a good general term that refers -- I guess "Mizrahi" is a good one, but -- to the Iraqi 38:00and the Iranian, the Egyptian -- all these Jewish musics. And Arabic music. So, those are kind of the four big epiphanies.

CW: And how did you -- was it a conscious decision to work with Yiddish music, or Jewish music?

FL: Yes. What time is it?

CW: It's 10:10.

FL: Okay. Do you -- I mean, I don't want to steer you off your track, so you can -- you should do what you want. But within this world of Yiddish, I think -- if it works for you -- what's interesting is how me and a lot of my contemporaries and peers are working in Yiddish culture with a very wide, varying degree of knowledge of the Yiddish language itself, ranging from anywhere for -- I mean, some people are fluent, but mostly some fluency because maybe they studied, or 39:00the rare person who really comes from that. Mostly they've worked hard to study it -- to none whatsoever. And yet are making Yiddish-informed art. I don't know -- and there was something a little earlier that made me think about it; I forget it was -- I don't know. But if that doesn't really fit your agenda --

CW: Sure. It does. I -- you mentioned maybe using the Yiddish opera as an example. Why --

FL: Oh, yeah.

CW: -- do you have to --

FL: Yeah. That's right.

CW: -- why do you feel like you have to write this Yiddish opera, even though you hate opera?

FL: Well, yeah. (Whitney laughs) The hating thing is -- there -- my wife's -- one of her dicta is you have to approach the thing you hate or you're scared of because it's telling you something. There's a reason why you react to it. So, you have to really approach it. So, you go to the thing you fear or the thing you're avoiding. So, that's why, you know, the cantorial and the opera in general. But opera in its really true sense is one of the great Gesamkunstwerk, 40:00total art forms, where you have music, spectacle, dance, theater, visual arts, everything. And nowadays most of them are multimedia, so it's really one of these total sensory, total aesthetic experiences. Like, you know, I'd say if you want to have -- experience life aesthetically, you either have to go into deep meditation and isolation until you get to the point where everything is an aesthetic experience, or you go to these total, complete art forms. Since 1977, when I got to New England Conservatory, I've been listening to all types of music. And I got very accustomed to listening to music and experiencing theater and art and movies in languages I didn't understand. And sometimes -- if you go 41:00into a movie, yeah, you'll read the subtitles. But if I'm going to hear King Sunny Adé, I don't know what he's singing about. If he happens to tell me, I do, and if I don't, I don't. But I can totally appreciate the music and the songs. And sometimes you even get a sense of what the song's about even though you don't understand a word, from the intentionality of the performer. And in these big artwork forms, like opera -- I mean, most people -- even if it's an opera in your home language, it's so aestheticized that you don't even understand the language. So, when you go to any opera, you have to actually know the story. Usually you read the libretto or you read the synopsis; you know the story. Otherwise, you're not really gonna get it from that. And if you see an Ibsen piece or a Mozart opera -- I mean, "Don Giovanni," whatever -- "Tosca" -- you know it. And it occurred to me that one -- there are a number of problems -- 42:00problematics -- in the twenty-first century with making new, big, Yiddish, text-based art. And the problems with it include the fact that -- I mean, to be overly simplistic, they're all based on ignorance of not only the milieu and the culture, but the language itself. So, you don't have performers who are really -- I'm oversimplifying. Please, this is not absolutely true. There are exceptions. It's just a general -- you don't have a large pool of actors to choose from. If I wanted to put on a great Yiddish play, I don't have a large pool of actors in their twenties and thirties who are totally fluent, who get it and can act in that way. So, you don't have the performe-- you don't have the writers, a great pool of people generating new Yiddish work. And you don't have an audience that's literate enough to understand it. So, these are three big 43:00hurdles. But it occurred to me that opera could kind of -- (whispers) what's the word I'm looking for? Supersede? -- could basically jump over all those hurdles because -- well, if I find a text that's already written, like this poem, but there are others, then we can adapt it and work with linguists and stuff to adapt a libretto, but we don't have to commission a new libretto from a new Yiddish writer. And I'm gonna work with both English dramaturgs and multilingual ones, 'cause we want to have Spanish involved. But also with Yiddishists. So, I'll work with Yiddishists to adapt the text. But that's different, because not every Yiddishist is also a great artist; that's part of the problem. You have great Yiddishists in terms of translation and understanding, but they're not gonna write a great piece of art. But you can fi-- there's enough archival stuff, which is why me and my colleagues are so obsessed with archives. Because 44:00this is where we're gonna get our sources. So, that takes care of that problem. Singers are trained to learn how to learn a language to sing it. They -- you know, a great opera singer can learn how to -- they probably already know German, French, Italian, and English, but if you give them a Spanish opera, they'll learn how to do that. That's their job. So, you can teach them how to sing -- much easier to get a great opera singer to sing in Yiddish than to get a great actor to act in Yiddish. It's a different thing. Because -- so that obliterates that. And vis-à-vis the audience, I believe that audiences know how to experience art in languages that they don't understand, whether it's through a combination of synopsis, libretto translation, supertitles -- you know, we're familiar this. And so, in a certain sense, going to a Yiddish opera should be no different than going to a German opera, a Strauss opera or something like this. 45:00So, I think that's one of the reasons that I've been very interested in Yiddish opera, because I think it gives -- with "A Night in the Old Marketplace" was supposed to be that great piece. And just the way things happened, we ended up doing the whole thing in English, for other -- we went down another road. Took us a long time to go from Peretz's beautiful Yiddish, which still deserves a piece of its own. It's amazing. "Bay nakht afn altn mark." We ended up being in English. But I -- so I think opera as a form allows us -- and I think that this relates to what's happening in our world. It relates to me to Jeffrey Shandler's writing about Yiddish being a post-vernacular language. I don't know if you've read any of Jeffrey's stuff. So, please -- I know you don't want to interrupt me 'cause not your job, but when I pause, tell me if I'm wrong. Okay? And you can 46:00cut it out from your thing. The way I understand his writing a little bit is that -- and plus, this is from anecdotes from hanging out and talking to him. He said he was looking -- he was asking the question, Is Yiddish a dead language or a dying language? And the way he approached it was not by looking at Yiddish, but by looking at dead and dying languages. And what are -- what makes something, according to linguists, a dead or dying language? And they have a list. You know, less than this many people who speak -- you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he noticed -- he basically concluded that Yiddish is in no way a dead or dying language! Because there's new work being generated -- I mean, there are hundreds of people here; I mean, we went to a Yiddish concert. There were five hundred people in the audience last night. They didn't tr-- I mean, how much people understood, that's a question, but there were living artists performing -- you know, it's -- and we heard Shane Baker's "Big Bupkis" the other night. So, it's not a -- it doesn't fit any of the descriptions of 47:00dead or dying language. But, if you absent -- if you absent three groups of people: Hasids, anyone over, let's say, seventy, and living East European Slavic Jews who somehow survived and whose family kept alive, there are almost negligible if not no real Yiddish speakers. I'm oversimplifying. So, all Schaechters and Gottesman and other dynasty families that speak Yiddish in their house, I apologize. We know you exist. Essentially, there is not. And yet, there are more Yiddish recordings that have probably come out in the last fifteen years than in the hundred years before it. I would -- I'm making that statistic up, but I would argue that I bet it's true. And if I said twenty-five and 150 -- I'm sure there's more Yiddish stuff that's been made in the last twenty, 48:00twenty-five years than in the entire recorded history of music. What's that about? There's more new work. There's more people playing the -- if you don't believe in a separation between language and culture, which I don't -- because klezmer music is the instrumental music of a Yiddish-speaking Jew. So, if you have a non-Yiddish-speaking person, Jew or not, who's playing klezmer music, they are involved with the Yiddish culture. They're not involved with Jewish culture or Sephardic culture. No, they're involved with Yiddish culture. It's particular. If we're learning about batkhones [wedding entertainers], if we're learning these forms, if we -- you know, all the things that go on here -- the paper-cutting and the visual art -- we're living with Yiddish culture. And making -- and studying old and living with new and archiving and studying. So, it's clearly living, except that -- I mean, it would be interesting to actually do a percentage. But let's just say, mostly by people who don't speak the language. Or speak it in various amounts, you know? And so, there's something 49:00very strange and strong going on here, the model of a post-vernacular living, thriving culture. I react very strongly against the academics and the politicians and the political academics -- who are the worst, and they should go to some rung of Dante's hell for their views -- who want to act like Yiddish culture is in some museum. Although I had a long discussion with Jack -- Professor Jack Kugelmass, and he sort of calmed down my vitriol on this, and he made some valid points. Yes. We are certainly at a point where Yiddish literacy, in the true sense of literacy, reading the texts, is not what it was, and we'll never get back to where it was a hundred years ago. I think we have to accept that the general Yiddish literacy, in terms of reading books -- if your view of 50:00culture and language is so limited that you've been brainwashed by these canonic writers like what's-his-name -- uh -- (whispers) what's his name? What's his name? -- Mr. The Canon, it's all about the canon. Oh, come on. I want to say Albert Brooks, but he's a comic filmmaker. No, what's his name? (laughs) Come on. The guy who wrote -- Bloom. Harold Bloom. Did you know that? So, why didn't you tell me?

CW: Well, no, I didn't have his name in my head?, but I was waiting --

FL: Oh, okay. I thought you -- (Whitney laughs) I thought it was some, like, interviewer rule, like, "I'm not allowed to tell you." Harold Bloom, who -- you know. So, if you take this totally horribly limited view of what cultural literacy means -- but it's true, yes, we will never be able to read and write -- we as a people. It would take some seismic shift -- which, let's say, isn't gonna happen. That said, Yiddish culture, which is based on the ability to work with the Yiddish texts and their reading and the milieu and the environment and 51:00the activism and the engagement, is as strong as it's ever been. I mean, there's art being made that's as deeply rooted as the art of the GOSET and the Yiddish theaters. I mean, it's really all there. Minus the -- so it's a weird conundrum.

CW: And what is the result of that? Sort of, what are the implications of this shift to a post-vernacular?

FL: Other than the obvious, that it's happening? (laughs) I mean -- I don't like to go there, because it's almost like this Pete Seeger song that I do remember growing up with. It was an anti-- a song against damming rivers. And it was written to an Irish folk song. He was playing the banjo. And it goes, basically, 52:00"Don't ask what a river is for." In other words, like, a river isn't for something. A river isn't for building a dam so you can have power to power the plants. A river is a river. That, don't ask -- don't look at everything and say, What's that for? I mean, the -- I think it's just a fact. Yiddish culture, based on a Yiddish cultural literacy -- which, weirdly, is tied to varying degrees to the linguistic literacy of -- and the spoken literacy of Yiddish -- is alive and thriving. So, that's -- I mean, I think that's all it means. That means it's not going anywhere and that the next generation -- I mean, I was in my twenties when I discovered this. Now I'm in my fifties. And so, I figure -- what's a generation? Twenty -- what do they call a generation?

CW: Twenty to thirty years, I think.

FL: Okay. So, somehow I'm already almost two generations up the ladder from when 53:00I fir-- and I see people. And it ain't going away. And they're doing all sorts of new stuff. So -- and I like to think that through my work and through just -- that I've become one -- me and my peers, the people my age, the Klezmatics and the people in the klez-- all the -- that we're links in this big chain. And we -- what's it mean? It means we got from here to here, and it's still connected. And what people do with that, what that's for, is that a good thing or bad thing? I'm not judging it. It's just a fact. It's just more -- and yes, we can lament that we don't live at an earlier time. But that's an old Jewish story. We're always -- you know the parable about the sacred place in the woods where they built the sacred fire and -- do you know this one? It's an old -- on the 54:00list of classic Jewish parables. And they would go to this certain place and make this fire and say these certain prayers and (UNCLEAR) -- you know, very blah, blah, blah. And then, with each generation, well, they forget the place. And they forget how they built the fire, and they for-- you might actually remember this. And they forget the prayers. And all they have is the fact that they tell the story that they know there was a time when they knew that there was a place where they did this ritual that they're not sure how it worked, and they said certain prayers. And they tell this story of that. And yes, you can say, Oh -- or the other story that goes parallel to it is, you know, we're standing on the backs of giants. There were these great scholars and great things. But even five hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, they were writing how they felt like they were standing on the backs of giants. As great as their study was, it was nothing like the great ones before them. So, maybe that's just 55:00part of it. Maybe we always look back and say, Oh my God, they were -- it was so genius. But we just do our part and just keep it going. And that's the whole point of it. And the parable, the other classic parable that I counter the -- as opposed to lamenting what we don't have -- is the story of Reb Zusya? Yes? No? I'll tell it anyway.

CW: That's great. Tell it. (laughs)

FL: Don't worry. Even if you say -- do you know it?

CW: I don't know yet.

FL: Okay. Reb Zusya tells his khosids, his disciples -- he says, "When I die and I go to heaven, they're not go-- hamelekh hakoved [King of glory] is not gonna ask me, 'Zusya, why weren't you more like Moshe Rabbeinu?'" You know this? No? "He's gonna go, 'Zusya, why weren't you more like Zusya?'" You know. So, we can't -- it does us no good to compare ourselves negatively against these great 56:00-- you know, of course, me compared to all this stuff that happened before us -- we're humbled by our ancestors and our tradition. And it's -- and we can never live up to it. But all we can do is try our best. And we're here at KlezKanada surrounded by hundreds of people who are trying their best to do what they can with it, and that's all we can do.

CW: Great.

FL: All right. Are we done?

CW: Well --

FL: Are we done?

CW: One last question?

FL: Um-hm.

CW: Partially -- I mean, just picking up on that, what message or advice would you give to the younger generation?

FL: Nothin'. Don't get caught. (laughs) No. Uh --

CW: Okay.

FL: Yeah.

[END OF INTERVIEW]