DANIEL KAHN ORAL HISTORY

christa whitney: This is Christa Whitney. I'm here at KlezKanada with Daniel Kahn. I'm going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. And it's August 24th, 2011.

DANIEL KAHN: August 24th, 2011.

CW:(laughs) Do I have your permission to record this interview?

DK:Yes, you do.

CW:Cool.

DK:Avade [Of course]. Far vos mir do [It's why we're here].

CW:Yeah. Oyb du vilst af yidish, ken zayn bayde [If you want to do it in Yiddish, it can be both]. Can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

DK:Well -- I can only tell you what I know about my family background. I can't 1:00tell you what I don't know. I'm a pretty fully American guy. You know, my family has been in America for the last hundred years, at least -- parts of it more. I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit. I was born in the city of Detroit. And my mother was born in Detroit; my father was born in Akron, Ohio. My mother's mother was born in the Lower East Side, in New York, in 1905. Her parents -- and she came from a huge galitsyaner [Polish Jewish] family, and her family came over just before she was born. My mother's father's family, I'm not -- I know less about. My mother's father was born in Racine, Wisconsin. His father was 2:00born in Poland. I don't really know where his mother was born. As far as I know -- I mean, my grandmother, of course, grew up speaking Yiddish and spoke Yiddish with her mother, who barely learned English. But I think almost all of her siblings were dead when I was a kid, and her husband was dead, my -- I never knew my grandfather. And my mom -- I never knew either of my grandfathers. So, she spoke entirely English. They were Reform Jews, assimilated. But very Jewish. Liberal. On my father's side, my father's mother was born in Manchester, England. The family was briefly there. And they came also from Galicia or 3:00somewhere in Austro-Hungary. I'm not really sure where. They came over through England to Cleveland. Then, they had various kind of -- uh, not always entirely legal, but business ventures. My grandmother's brothers, especially. And my grandmother married Ed Kahn, my father's father. Ed Kahn came from a family of what were Prussian Jews. His grandfather -- my grandfather's grandfather, Abraham Cohen -- came over from Königsberg in 1869, through London. His wife was from Poland. And they were very secular, educated, very literate, yekish 4:00[German Jewish], who moved to New York. My grandfather was born in New York. My great-grandfather and my grandfather were both writers. My great-grandfather had a column in a newspaper. He was a columnist. And my grandfather also wrote the book reviews, opera reviews, theater reviews, and was a newspaperman and an ad man. And then, my father went into his business after he got back from Korea, my father, David Kahn. A. David Kahn. I was originally E. Daniel Kahn, the "E" being for my grandfather Ed. And my father's "A" was from his great-grandfather, Abraham. So -- my father also an intellectual and an entrepreneur. And he was a 5:00pretty secular guy, an atheist, but very wonderful, wonderful man. Very smart. He taught me a lot. He always had a million -- he always had at least twenty business ventures going at the same time.

CW:Can you describe a little bit about the home you grew up in, what ways it felt Jewish?

DK:Well, I was -- you know, we were members of Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, of Detroit. And I don't know, I was bar mitzvahed. I celebrated holidays. I was in the junior choir. I went on and had some continuing education after my bar mitzvah, like Sunday schools, so -- Monday nights or something. But I became increasingly alienated by the religion and by the kind of suburban Jewish mentality. And at the same time, I was getting into 6:00acting. Did my first professional acting at the age of twelve, and I've worked a lot at the theater in Detroit called the Jewish Ensemble Theater. So, that was a way of sort of re-encountering Jewishness in a cultural context, outside of the confines of a synagogue. Yeah.

CW:What was around culturally when you were growing up? Music, theater --

DK:I mean, my cultural education was largely a secular one. It was mostly, like, going to the symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, museums, falling in love with Diego Rivera and the great murals that are in Detroit, and the kind of amazing working-class Detroit cultural heritage of -- you know, the bohemian poetry 7:00scene and the Cass Corridor and -- and getting into the great songwriters and pop music and rock and punk and soul and Motown and jazz and -- the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg and -- some things I really fell in love with, you know? Leonard Cohen. Bob Dylan.

CW:What was the political atmosphere?

DK:My -- the political atmosphere, I mean -- I was always raised liberal when I was a little kid, you know, like, Democratic. My personal politics became more 8:00radicalized later on. You know, I was a good suburban liberal Zionist. You know, I thought Israel was really important. The synagogue I went to was very Zionistic -- in a mainstream liberal way. In a mainstream American liberal way. But I became increasingly dis-- less and less interested in that as a political orientation. And in high school, it was the time of the great -- there was a big newspaper strike in Detroit. And I became radicalized through learning about unions that way. And becoming very aware of race politics in Detroit. Detroit's a very segregated -- (sighs) society. And I fell in love with the city of Detroit, and with the African American culture there. And with the ways of 9:00combating the kind of casual demographic -- and also, just personal attitudinal racism that one encounters in Detroit. I've lived in the South a lot too, and I think that the racism of the North is some of the most aggressive I've ever encountered. Industrial racism, working-class racism, the division between white and black working class. And so, when I got into class politics, I had to see that through the lens of race and trying to take responsibility for and be more conscious of my position as a white person -- as a white male -- in America. A very privileged white male in America. I went to a great school called the Roeper School, which was a humanist, internationalist school, founded by a couple -- a German couple, a Jew and a non-Jew, who escaped from the Nazis. He 10:00was an anti-fascist; she was Jewish. And they came to America and started a school that was the first integrated school in the Detroit area. And it was anti-racist, anti-nationalist, humanistic school. And I went to that school for twelve years, so it -- it, I think, had a much stronger hand in forming me than the synagogue did. But being Jewish has always been a part of who I am, but in -- it was something -- it was just one informing aspect. And as I went on to college, I became more and more interested in politics and activism. I got into Brecht. I got into the theater work of Augusto Boal and Paulo Freire and his radical concepts of pedagogy. I did theater workshops in prisons and juvenile detention centers. I was getting really into the intersection of politics and 11:00theater in the street and in terms of activism. And I was always into, like, political songwriters, like Bob Dylan, but also Woody Guthrie, singers like Leadbelly, Paul Robeson, the political aspects of punk, The Clash, Billy Bragg, Utah Phillips, and of course, Tom Waits and -- he's not so political, but I love him very much.

CW:So, I want to talk more about music, but first, how much Yiddish, if any, did you have from your family and community?

DK:Very little. I mean, I was aware that it was one of the cultural aspects of Jewish identity in America, of immigrant identity, but I'd never really thought about it. It wasn't a focus. It wasn't taught to us. Nobody taught us Yiddish 12:00literature or Yiddish poetry, the history of the Yiddish workers' movement -- I mean, it just wasn't a part of education. Expressly Jewish education in this synagogue was about religion from a liberal Reform perspective and Israel and the Holocaust. I had my first Holocaust history class when I was six years old. I started reading Holocaust literature; I met my first survivor. They took us to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Detroit, which was the first one in America. It used to be very small. They rebuilt it. It's huge now. But it was a real formative thing for me, learning in graphic detail about the Holocaust when I was six or seven years old, and then continuing to learn about it and do theater about it and study it and think about it. And then, when I got a little older, 13:00in the '90s, there was genocide in the former Yugoslavia. There was genocide in Rwanda. And I -- it was all -- I remember -- I've read recently some things that I wrote. You know, I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old, and -- but I was really thinking about these things through the prism of having been brought up on the Holocaust as a central pillar of my own identity. An imaginary pillar, even though -- I have no family there. I had no personal connection to it. But this imaginary associative trauma was very influential for me.

CW:So, was -- I mean, what was -- was there a tangible attitude towards Yiddish?

DK:I think it -- not really. I mean, it wasn't like I inhe-- I probably 14:00subconsciously inherited some of the stereotypical aversion to Yiddish as just something that wasn't important or wasn't to be really invested in. I didn't think about it. I was aware that the theater I worked at was a kind of -- that the Yiddish theater was an ancestor of the theater I was working in. But -- and I was aware of "The Dybbuk," somewhat. I was aware of some Yiddish songs. But I wasn't singing them. It was much -- it was much later that I turned to it in a specific way.

CW:And how did you end up living in New Orleans?

DK:I fell in love with New Orleans. I was really into jazz. I went to there for the first time when I was fifteen. Then when I was about nineteen, I drove down there with some friends for a long time 'cause I had a lot of friends living down there. Detroiters love to move to New Orleans, 'cause it's kind of like a warmer, more functional, more fun version of Detroit. And it was in New Orleans that I discovered klezmer music. I heard the New Orleans Klezmer All Stars. And I had heard Jewish music before, but this was the first time that I really heard it in this funky, nightlife, jazz setting, this totally joyous and bizarre context. And I fell in -- I totally fell for it. I bought their records and brought them back up to Ann Arbor, where I was in school. And -- but I didn't really know what it was, exactly. I didn't really know anything about its 16:00history. And then, when I moved to New Orleans for real, in 2001, I got more into it. I was playing music on the street. People started teaching me some klezmer tunes. I was listening to it more and more. And that became one of my interests. Not so much as a musician as a primary thing yet. I was writing American-style folk songs and theater music and -- you know, I pretty much -- when I graduated from college, I decided I wanted to be a songwriter. Like the day after I graduated -- having spent four years planning on being an actor and a director and a playwright, I just decided I wanted to write songs. And then, I started writing more and more songs, and they started changing and changing and 17:00changing. And I actually put -- I put "Dona Dona" on my first song -- on my first album. In English, though, 'cause I fell in love with that song in English, just as a folk song. And I sang a verse of it in Yiddish. I remember -- that's the first time I think I ever officially sang Yiddish. So.

CW:So, when did you start playing music?

DK:Playing music?

CW:Um-hm.

DK:I sta-- I've played music since I was a kid. But it was always sort of on the side, you know. I was playing jazz and rock tunes. I was in a rockabilly band in high school and stuff, and we'd play old rockabilly tunes and Beatles tunes and Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits songs and stuff. And I learned piano, I learned guitar, and I just started learning hundreds and hundreds of songs by 18:00songwriters that I loved. But I wasn't writing many songs myself. I was writing poetry and plays. And then, when I started writing songs, it took a while for me to find my own voice. You know? And so, it became a focus of mine, as something that I do. Like, I book gigs; I go on tours; I make records. That was about ten years ago. Yeah.

CW:And -- I mean, when did you -- was there a moment when you decided that, I'm gonna do Yiddish music?

DK:There were a series of moments where I started getting more inter-- I mean, besides having done "Dona Dona" on my first album, called "Pegboard Blues," I 19:00guess in 2004, I was playing a lot of klezmer music, and it was the first year that I came here, to KlezKanada. And I was between things. I had been living in New York. I was sort of done with New Orleans. I didn't want to move back to Detroit. I was thinking about moving to California. I had been there for the summer, where my sister lives. And I wanted to write a musical about Colma, you know, the cemetery town south of San Francisco. I think it's a fascinating place. And so, I was out there working on that, which I never finished. (laughs) And then, I went to KlezKanada. And I met Alan Bern, just down there. And I had just done a production of "Threepenny Opera." I had been doing a lot of Brecht and was really interested in Germany and in German theater, German film, and I 20:00had heard a lot of good things about Berlin. And he and I started talking, and we hit it off. We were talking about Brecht and politics and stuff. And we became friends. And he was like, "Hey, you should sublet my apartment in Berlin." So, I was like, "Yeah, okay." And he's like, "Yeah, if you're into klezmer music, there's a good klezmer scene there, and I can get you work playing music in the theater," blah-blah-blah. "I can introduce you to people." So, I went -- so I went, seven months later, but within that year I moved to Berlin. I had never been there before; I didn't speak any German. I didn't speak any Yiddish. Although I had already been singing Yid-- I had already been -- like I said, I'd been playing klezmer music. When I met Winograd, Michael Winograd, he and I started a project that we had one gig for in Boston that fall. I sang some Yiddish songs for that. I was -- I composed the score for a production of "The Dybbuk" at this theater in Detroit. So, I was really getting 21:00into that world. And at that point, I was hooked on klezmer, and I was starting to get more into Yiddish song. And then, just before I moved to Berlin I heard Brave Old World's "Lodz Ghetto" program for the first time. And that was a real, like, (snaps finger) click in my head. And I heard the way Michael Alpert sings Yiddish, and I heard the kind of -- you know, I was into it before, but when you hear him sing it live, when he's -- he just -- he sings -- he has teeth, you know? He sings it with, like, teeth. You know what I mean? Like, with real -- it's dark and challenging and funny and weird and sexy and radical. And there was something so defiant about that piece. So, there was something so, like, 22:00Fuck you, about the "Lodz Ghetto" program, and complicated and critical and -- and very Brechtian, in a way. And so, I realized that Yiddish was not something that needs to be folkloric or sentimental or nostalgic at all. And it shouldn't be. And that if you can take it out of that context and recontextualize it and play rock and roll with it, even if it's in a traditional folk style, that that's still rock and roll. That's the blues. That's punk. It's radical. So, that was a real eye-opener for me. And then, when I moved to Berlin and went for the first time to the Kraków Music Festival, the Jewish festival in Kraków, and started having all of these weird feelings about Jewish culture without Jews 23:00and (sighs) looking again as if for the first time at the history of fascism and 1930s Europe -- and 1940s Europe. And at the same time, learning German and really learning Yiddish songs for real for the first time and starting to translate them and starting to perform them. And then, forming this band, The Painted Bird, named after the Kosinski novel. Yeah. It was all in 2005, pretty much, when all of those things happened in a deep way. Two thousand four, 2005, was the real shift for me. I guess it was just seven years ago, six years ago. 24:00And then, I started learning the language and learning more and more songs, translating more and more songs.

CW:Did things change when you started really being able to understand the Yiddish?

DK:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm still learning all the time. I have -- I went to YIVO in 2008, in the summer of 2008, and that was the real intensive language thing. But I've always had a pretty good ear for the sounds and the tastes of language. I've always been better at pronouncing languages than actually speaking them. (laughs) I speak some French; I speak German now. And with Yiddish, it always just felt really comfortable. Like, I really love singing in Yiddish. And I love 25:00speaking the words in Yiddish. It's a really -- I love expressing myself with these -- with this music, with the music of that language. So, yeah. I mean, my interest in Yiddish is somewhat selective, you know? I am interested in it generally as a language, but I'm also not -- like, I don't want to fetishize the whole language. There's a lot about the culture that I'm not -- I mean, I'm not gonna say, Oh, I don't want to hear about that. I'm interested. But there's a lot of the culture that I'm only sort of marginally interested in, only as much as I'd be interested in that aspect of any culture. I'm not so into the really religious stuff. And I know you can't know Yiddishkayt without having the knowledge about the religion, because it's -- you can't separate it. Even the most secular, radical atheist Yiddishists and Jews, they came from that world, 26:00so they knew absolutely -- they knew perfectly what they were rebelling against. And that religious background isn't there. I do have another Jewish background that I guess I'm kind of rebelling against, but not directly. I'm just really interested in this other thing. I was into political folk songs and sort of the darker side of modern poetry and songwriting, balladry. I was into that stuff before, in English. And so, when I discovered this whole beautiful world of it in Yiddish, it was like this unseen world. It was like discovering a secret attic of all of this stuff. And that -- I had the feeling -- I think a lot of people did too -- I come from Detroit, so people are in love -- like raves, you 27:00know. And the idea of what you can do with an empty factory or an empty warehouse or an abandoned house, what you can -- what squatters can accomplish, the kinds of radical new ways of living in an abandoned house. And I felt like, Wow, Yiddish is like that. Of course, it's not an entirely (laughs) abandoned house, you know. But there are rooms in that house that are under-used. (laughs) And I love those rooms. I like living in them.

CW:So, where -- what inspires you?

DK:(pause) Stories inspire me. I love storytelling. I love hearing storytellers. I love -- I love that about folk songs. And I'm inspired to be a storyteller. I 28:00like that. What else inspires me? I like birds. I like trains. (laughs) (pause) Yeah, people who don't sleep enough 'cause they're up all night singing, that inspires --

CW:And what are your sources?

DK:For songs?

CW:Um-hm.

DK:You mean for so-- like, for folk -- like old songs, like, that --

CW:Well, just sources that you use in your work.

DK:Well, some of them are songs that I learned from friends, teachers and stuff, 29:00from other singers. In Berlin, I have now -- my piano, it's totally covered with songbooks, Yiddish songbooks, English songbooks, German songbooks. Yeah. I love books. I have tons of LPs. I listen to records constantly. Got old records, old songbooks. Those are my sources, I guess. I try to write songs as much as I can. I've been writing in Yiddish a little bit and in German a little bit. But -- I get inspired working with Psoy Korolenko. Psoy is a good friend of mine. He lives in Moscow. He and I have a project called The Unternationale. We've been 30:00working together for about five years now. And whenever he and I are around each other I feel inspired. Even if I haven't written in months, as soon as I start hanging out with Pasha, we start riffing on ideas and writing things and translating things, and -- he inspires me to work. Yeah. But being around other songwriters is a big inspiration for me. So, that helps.

CW:Do you have a specific song or project that you've been particularly proud of?

DK:Song or project. Well, I'm not gonna say The Painted Bird. I mean, that's my band. I'm proud of -- (laughs) I'm proud of the stuff I do with Psoy. There are a couple of his songs that I've translated into a singable version in English that I'm particularly proud of. (laughs) 'Cause it's -- like, there was a song 31:00of his last year where I listened to it in Russian -- I don't speak Russian, but I listen to it fluently. (laughs) But he had explained the whole song to me. I was there when he wrote it. And then, he performed it. I said, "Man, that's such a good song. There's no way we could ever do that in English." And immediately, we started translating it into English. You know, it was like a little challenge to ourselves. And after two days, we had this great song, (laughs) uh -- called "What Does It Mean, What Does It Mean?" Or we call it "Lady Diana" sometimes. Songs that I'm particularly proud of. I don't know. I'm proud -- whenever I finish a song that I like, that's the one that I'm most proud of, the most recent one, you know. Recently I wrote a song about the kind of trend of nostalgia for communism that there's going on, like in Germany, and also actually, all over Eastern Europe, there's this kind of nostalgia for the 32:00communist times. Which is a sort of aestheticized, depoliticized nostalgia. But I wrote a song about that, called "The Good Old Bad Old Days." There's a folk festival in Michigan that I've been part of for the last ten years. I'm very proud of that group of folk musicians that are like another family for me. That's grown beautifully. I'm very proud of that. I'm proud of my mom. She's learning Yiddish. (laughter)

CW:Traveling around in as many places as you have and performing at festivals, do you -- can you sort of point out or have you noticed any major differences in 33:00the different countries that you've worked in, in terms of the klezmer music scene or attitudes towards it?

DK:Yeah. Sure. I don't know if I would make too many generalizations from country to country. I think that there are diff-- you mean in audiences or in the scene of musicians?

CW:Both.

DK:Because largely, the scene of musicians is the same. It's a truly international -- I wouldn't even call it a scene, 'cause a scene tends to have one kind of audience, whereas this is sort of a movement that has really, really divergent audiences. But it's all the same people. So, it's more of a movement, I guess, or a -- yeah, I guess I'd call it a movement. (pause) In Germany, I 34:00mean, you're mostly not performing for Jews, which does make some difference, I guess. It's a different dynamic, I guess. But within that, there's also many different kinds of audiences. You know, like, we were playing in Nuremberg for the -- for some festival called Grenzenlos. And it was all about, like, celebrate friendship between Germany and Israel. And it was -- they were all Germans, but it was kind of the same audience I would have been playing for -- I could have found that audience elsewhere and they would all be Jewish, you know? It's like -- there's different -- audiences have different sort of cultural politics, I guess, different attitudes. If I play in a funky punk club in Berlin 35:00for tourists or in France or in Moscow or in New York, it's gonna be -- they're gonna -- I'm gonna have the same good time in all of those places, 'cause it's young, sort of alternative people. Or old alternative people too. It's not an ageist thing. But I certainly feel more comfortable in a more heterogenous -- heterogeneous -- alternative countercultural environment, rather than something kind of very official. You know, I've often said, I'm not totally comfortable with saying that the correct context for what I do is an expressly Jewish context. I don't think that that's the most important signifier in what I do. I 36:00think it's one of the signifiers. It's one of the aspects of my identity. But it's certainly not the first thing that I want to have associated with me. It's one of the things. And I think that Yiddish and Jewish culture needs to have the same sort of place in the multi-ethnic, or multi-culti, conversation. It shouldn't have a special category. It should be amongst the nations. (laughs)

CW:Are there other types of music other than Jewish music that you work in?

DK:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't call everything that I do Jewish music. First of all, just 'cause it's in Yiddish, I wouldn't necessarily say that makes it 37:00Jewish music. I think there are different musical styles that I play with. It's a language. You can use a language to say anything you want, and you can use -- you can speak in that language in many different ways. Jewish music is one of the musical languages that I use, amongst others. I play gigs where it's just like singer-songwriter stuff or more jazzy stuff. I've played in country bands. I've played in Russian disco bands. I've played in '20s jazz swing bands. I love playing that stuff. I love playing regular old Americana singer-songwriter gigs. I -- yeah. I'm happy to -- I guess the answer to your question would be, I don't know how much I really would say that what I do is Jewish music, in a definitive way.

CW:Can you talk a little about politics in your work and --

DK:Sure. Yeah. I'm -- well, like what?

CW:I guess, is there a -- do you have a political goal in -- through your work?

DK:A goal.

CW:Like a message.

DK:A message.

CW:I mean, I think there's a message, but I don't know. (laughs) From your point of view.

DK:Well, I guess, like, studying Brecht sort of gave me an aversion to the idea that it's effective to just state a message. I think that -- like, okay, right now with Jenny Romaine, we're working with some stuff about Musar and this thing about parables. So, this thing about, like, why do we use parables to express 39:00truth? And that -- there's this story of, like, truth is walking down the road naked, and everybody just finds it disgusting, and they avert their eyes. And then, he -- truth runs into parable, and parable is dressed in these -- gay clothing, beautiful, joyous, playful, extravagant clothes. And essentially, parable tells truth that you have to dress up a little bit. People don't like to just see the naked truth. They like to have a little bit of artifice and a little bit of beauty and a little bit of -- you know, they like things to be a bit more gay. So, truth in gay clothing. (laughs) I like to -- if I have a message, I like to put it in terms of a story, in terms of a parable or in terms 40:00of telling a story. Or there should be some humor, some distancing, some alienation. In German, we call it [German 00:40:11], which is -- comes from the German -- Brecht's term for Verfremdungseffekt, the alienating effect, the estrangement effect, the -- it's not exactly just affecting you emotionally; it's getting a little bit of distance. It's maybe a little bit off-putting. Comedy does that naturally. Humor does that. But I think asking challenging questions is far more radical than providing what you may feel is a -- the right answer. I don't really want to provide answers. I try to ask as many questions as possible. And I try to shine light on the areas of maybe politics or society 41:00which we assume are not questionable. We take them for granted. We say, Oh, well, this -- we can't do any better than free-market capitalism. That's just -- that's just the way things are. I mean, human beings are that way. They're all -- competition is innate. It's our instinct. We're like animals, and we -- capitalism best reflects this human nature of competition, and it's the only true democracy, is this kind of free-market democracy. And I think a lot of people assume that this is just absolutely true because, Well, we tried fascism, and we tried communism, and that was a nightmare, so we must go with this. And I try to say, Well, no, let's actually -- let's ask some important questions about this. Let's continue to ask the question if this is really how things work, if this is really what we need to be assuming shouldn't be changed. And I don't 42:00need to provide the answer. I don't need to -- wouldn't matter if I did. It would just mean that people -- there wouldn't be anything interesting in that, if I said, Well, we should do this and this and this. You know, it's like -- I just like asking questions. I guess that's pretty Jewish. It's not Jewish. It's just smart. (laughs) I try to be as smart as -- I try to ask smart questions.

CW:Um --

DK:But my politics are Left, obviously. (laughs) If they weren't, then -- you know, it's just -- it's August 24th, 2011. I could be in Jerusalem right now attending the Glenn Beck rally. (laughs) But instead I'm here at KlezKanada, and I'm a lot happier about that.

CW:Performing artists have played a role in cultural revivals historically. What 43:00is your take on the whole concept of cultural revival?

DK:Revival. Well, what I like about the term "revival" is that it's a biological term -- that it recognizes that culture is something that's organic. Which I think we should talk about culture in organic terminology and not sort of static terminology. Cultures grow. Cultures adapt. They evolve, whether you want them to or not. And when you revive something, you are going to be reviving it in a different form than it was in before it needed revival. That's what I like about the term "revival." What I don't like about the term "revival" is that it sort 44:00of indic-- it assumes that Yiddish died and needed to be revived. Which it didn't. Just because maybe it went out of fashion for a lot of people or they had other agendas. But -- yeah. I -- look. It lives, and it changes, and I like that about it. I like that we have to kind of sometimes fill in the gap with invention. There -- it -- a lot has been lost. It was lost in a horrible and traumatic way, sometimes. Sometimes it was lost just through ignorance. But this is history, you know? I mean, I share a lot with a lot of the people who were 45:00part of the revival because I came to Yiddish culture, and Yiddish music, specifically, from another music, from other things. I didn't grow up with it, like -- if you talk to some guys, like Michael Winograd or maybe Jake Shulman-Ment or maybe some of the even younger people who are here, the -- they grew up listening to klezmer. They grew up listening to revival bands. But I didn't. And I think that stuff's great. You know, I don't -- sometimes people will say that I'm like the enfant terrible of klezmer or some bullshit. This is like, a press thing, or, like, you know, "If you hate klezmer, you'll like this, a radical break from --" -- I hate this kind of thing. I'm not -- I'm interested in being radical, but so are a lot of my mentors and colleagues who have been doing this for thirty, forty, fifty years. Radicalism is old. (laughs) It's 46:00traditional. Tradition and radicalism, they're not mutually exclusive. I don't like the idea of too much novelty, too much -- I don't think it has to be new to be avant-garde, to be progressive. So, I'm into that tradition. I'm into taking things and combining them. I don't know if that -- it's kind of a roundabout answer.

CW:(laughs) What role -- or I guess I want to ask a question about cultural transmission, which I think is -- different than cultural revival. What role can/do/should/shouldn't performing artists play in transmission of culture?

DK:Well, they play a role whether they think about it or not, whether they want to or not. Someone asked me once if I was a cultural ambassador for Yiddish, and 47:00I said -- I don't know if there's, like, a diplomatic -- (laughs) if there was an embassy somewhere for Yiddishland, I don't know, I wouldn't work there. I mean, there's other people here who might, but I -- I like being a smuggler more than an ambassador. I like smuggling Yiddish into other contexts where you wouldn't expect to encounter it. And in terms of transmission, I'm more interested in that, in -- I'm as interested in the context as I am in the content. So, it's about bringing the content into new contexts. And new ways of looking at it. Which is essentially what transmission is. I mean, musicians have always been on the edges of cultures, on borders of cultures, 'cause they -- 48:00it's just the sort of social role that the musician; I think it's a pretty great deal. And so, for me, those are the places where culture flourishes, when it comes in contact with other cultures, those -- on the borders. That's where creolization happens. That's where adaptation happens. That's where exchange happens. And I'm interested in exchange. I'm interested in openness, in challenging borders, moving them, destroying them. Or at least questioning them, examining them. So, in terms of transmission, it's not about the maintenance of a community and passing something on from one generation to the next within the bou-- within that community. That's not really what I'm into. There are other people who do that fine, but that's not my thing. I'm more interested in, like, what do we put outside? What -- how do we -- how is this part of a larger 49:00conversation? And Yiddish -- that's one of the things that turns me on about Yiddish. Structurally, as a language, it was always about that. Regardless of how many of Yiddish speakers lived in an isolated world, I think that the development of the language, because it was a multinational language, it was a transnational language, it was so open, you know. And it drank in so much of the world around it. And it affected the world around it. And it was cosmopolitan and traveling and -- dangerous. It was dangerous for anybody who wants to hang their hat on a national identity as if it's something real. 'Cause it -- I think it shows us that those -- those walls don't actually exist.

CW:Do you consider yourself an activist?

DK:An activist. I have been more of an activist in the past. Like a direct activist. I've worked as an organizer for unions and community organizations. I've protested a lot. I've been at a lot of rallies. I've organized voting campaigns and -- I don't do that as much as I used to. I do it once in a while. I still -- it's not my main focus. I'm a culture worker. And I think that there's a political aspect to what I do, and I try to take responsibility for the political meaning of my cultural engagement. But I wouldn't classify myself primarily as an activist. Although it is a part of my identity, yeah. But there 51:00are people who do a lot more work, who deserve to be called (laughs) activists. And I support them. I try to support them. But I also -- I've shied away from the complete resistance lifestyle of an activist, where I'm fighting all fights at once, and I really feel that how I live my life, how I spend my money, what kind of food I eat, that everything needs to go through some sort of a political litmus test and that everything is -- I believe that everything is a political action. I do believe that everything is political. But I don't believe that one is most effective when they are trying to be responsible for the politics of every action that they make. Maybe I'm just lazy. But I also believe that -- 52:00someone who knows how to do one thing really well that can really, really help a cause or really help people, that's a lot more important than whether or not that person -- if they're doing that -- where they buy their socks or something, what kind of milk they put in their coffee. (laughs) My attitude will probably change about that, but right now I'm trying to be focused on one thing. (laughs) The activism.

CW:What about cultural activism?

DK:Cultural activism. Yeah, I guess I'm more of a cultural activist. I'm -- I could say that I'm engaged in that more directly.

CW:What does that term mean to you?

DK:Well, I advocate for Yiddish. And I advocate for also -- I also advocate for 53:00the validity and legitimacy of secular Yiddish and modern Yiddish literature and the kind of -- that Yiddish world that is not as populous as it was before. So yeah, I guess I'm -- that's something I could advocate for.

CW:You're teaching here, and I know you teach other places. What do you like/dislike about teaching?

DK:Well, I'm not a good enough accordion player to be an accordion teacher. And my Yiddish song repertoire is -- it's pretty extensive but not deep enough to go up against the people here who can really teach amazing -- I mean, I could do a repertoire class if I wanted to. But -- and I could do a performance class. But what -- mostly what I've been into teaching -- and mostly what they've hired me 54:00to do -- which, you know, I'm happy with -- is genitive -- "genitive" -- generative writing workshops. Like, I think that we need to -- I think it's great to learn old songs and great to learn old klezmer tunes and nigunim [melodies] and old dances. But what's really exciting to me is the creation of new material that's informed by the traditional material, that reuses and readapts and translates and -- I'm really into that. I like creating new things. I think we need more songs. We need to move forward. There's all kinds of stuff that never happened with Yiddish song that happened in English song, and I want that to happen. I want people to start messing with it. I love the idea of creating multilingual songs. And I'm a songwriter, so I also like talking and teaching and working with other songwriters and -- in a workshop environment. I 55:00like helping them sculpt things and make things better and give themselves permission to write bad songs, write and write -- write the songs that I am too lazy to write right now. (laughs) So, yeah. I dig that. I dig bringing a group of people together and then at the end of the week, there's seven new songs in the world. It's amazing. Yeah.

CW:What are you working on right now?

DK:Well, we have a new record that came out at the beginning of the year. And so, we're gonna -- I don't know, I'll probably make another record that'll come out end of 2012 or 2013 with my band. I'm getting more and more into love songs and ballads, like the dark ballads and murder ballads and not-so-political 56:00stuff. Although I think they're political too. Usually somebody -- they're protest songs where somebody's complaining. (laughs) Yeah. I've been getting really into Prince Nazaroff, who was this Yiddish singer in New York in the '50s and before, like vaudeville guy, street singer. So, me and Psoy are gonna -- Psoy and I are gonna work with some of our friends making a tribute album, hopefully, to Prince Nazaroff. Working on more Unternationale stuff, writing songs with Psoy. I'm getting back into writing English songs, just regular old American songwriter songs. I miss that. I've been into German songs lately, like German folk music and German folk songs, and singer-songwriters in German. So, 57:00I've been getting into -- so you can see I'm -- I have a lot going on. But I'm traveling a lot, and in order to really see any of these projects (laughs) to fruition, I think I need to stay in one place for at least two weeks. (laughs) So, yeah.

CW:Well, I know living in Berlin you mentioned that you have more contact with Eastern Europe and people from former Soviet Union.

DK:Yeah.

CW:How do they -- how does that inform your work? What is that giving you?

DK:Well, I mean, my two major collaborative friendships -- well, I mean, there have been several, actually. There are a lot of artists that I've worked with. So, I shouldn't say "two." But artists that I would not have regular creative 58:00contact with had I not been able to go to Russia several times are Psoy Korolenko, Vanya Zhuk from the band Nayekhovichi, Sasha Lurje from Riga and Ilya Shneyveys. They have a band Forshpil. People in Berlin who are from that world, like Yuriy Gurzhy. I was in his band RotFront for a long time. Then, other people I'm forgetting, but, you know, like -- it's just been a great encounter. These are people my age -- maybe a little older, maybe a little younger, but essentially my generation -- who grew up on the other side of the looking glass, you know? I'm a Cold War kid. I grew up -- you know, with no contact with that world. And then -- that we all like a lot of the same songs and that we like some of the same movies and that we have similar attitudes towards rock and roll 59:00or politics or literature, and learning about Russian films and Russian songwriters that I didn't know about. And -- it's just been a lot of fun. It's a crazy world over there. (laughs) And I met most of them here, I should say. I met them here in Canada, at KlezKanada. But then, living in Berlin has made it possible for me to work with them more readily.

CW:Do you ever use Yiddish outside of your work?

DK:Yeah. I mean, it's crept into my language, I guess. I haven't become more -- I don't know, I don't know if I've been resisting it, or it's just not something -- I don't have, like, a Yiddish persona that I have really put on much. I guess 60:00there are certain words and phrases that have certainly crept into my language, because they are so much more effective and descriptive than anything in English.

CW:Like what?

DK:Nothing comes to mind right now, but I know that they're there. (laughs) Yeah. Yeah. And I love speaking Yiddish with people. I love -- when I've -- the Yiddish speakers that I know, when we have an opportunity to speak Yiddish with each other, we have -- we speak in Yiddish. 'Cause it's great. It's fun. I love -- it's -- I wish I could do it more. I should do it more.

CW:Um --

DK:Far vos redn mir af anglish [Why are we speaking in English]?

CW:Kh'veys nisht [I don't know]. (laughter)

DK:No, I wouldn't have been able to say everything I wanted to say in Yiddish.

CW:Do you have anything else? I have a few more questions. Do you have anything else you want to talk about?

DK:Nothing that pops into my mind. I mean, I could ask you a bunch of questions. (laughs)

CW:What trends have you noticed -- well, I guess, yeah -- in the years that you've been coming to these festivals?

DK:(sighs) Hm. We should go. But -- trends. I was just looking at the time.

CW:Okay.

DK:'Cause it's after seven. We should get dinner.

CW:Okay.

DK:I don't know. I'm -- yeah. Like, less and less money, but the economy sucks. 62:00A lot of these institutions are in dire straits, and they need help. And I think that it's shameful, some of the things that a lot of people get to choose to spend money on that don't think that these kinds of institutions are worth supporting. That's a trend. The other trends, they come and they go. You know, there's -- (sighs) you know, the politics and the religious side of things, they go up and down. It depends on where you are and who comes and when it is and which festival you're talking about. The European music scene is gonna take a hit economically. I just know it's gonna happen in the next couple of years. The same way being a musician in the States is really, really difficult, because 63:00there's not much support for artists. But these are all general things. I'm glad there are so many young Yiddishists that I'm meeting, people who are into the language and the music, from all different kinds of cultural backgrounds. I love that. That's what turned me on to this. You know, it was non-Jews who got me into Yiddish and klezmer in the first place. I never forget that. That's why I try to say, like, identity politics are not the first thing that are going on here. So.

CW:Do you have any advice for aspiring artists?

DK:Oh. Oh, boy. Don't do it. God. Get a job. No. (pause) Don't be afraid to look 64:00backwards. Don't be afraid to look to the past. Don't be afraid of history. Don't be afraid of informing yourself about the past. And reading as much as possible. And -- yeah. Look backwards. We're all looking backwards anyway. We all could be walking into a giant wall. We have no idea. There was an earthquake in Washington, DC. We're all walking backwards. Walter Benjamin was right. We go through history backwards. So if we're to walk backwards, look as far backwards as you can. Keep looking back. It's the most progressive thing that we can do, to look back. That's what I would say. Look back. Look backwards. (laughs)

CW:Cool. A sheynem dank [Thank you very much].

DK:Nito farvos [You're welcome].

[END OF INTERVIEW]