LORIN SKLAMBERG ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney, and today is July -- 15th?

LORIN SKLAMBERG: Ah, yes. (laughter)

CW:Fifteenth, 2012. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Lorin Sklamberg, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record this interview?

LS:Yes, you do.

CW:Thank you. So, as a place to start, can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

LS:I don't know much about my father's side of the family. My father and my mother split up when I was around six. So, I'm way more in touch with my 1:00mother's family, specifically my mother's mother's family. My maternal grandfather -- I met him a few times, 'cause he also had split up with my grandmother. And he was from Poland, I believe from Warsaw. And he was the only one of his family, I think, that survived, that left Poland and came to the United States. And the rest of his family died during World War II. My grandmother's family was from Fas-- what --- "Fastov" in Yiddish, "Fastiv" in current Ukraine. Sixty miles or so from Kiev. And they came to United States -- they came first to Chicago and then to Los Angeles. And there were four sisters 2:00and two brothers. And the oldest two siblings came over first and worked and made money to bring the rest of the family over. Of course, their parents were observant, religious. When you see pictures of them, you know, very formal with a beard and just kind of what you kind of think of as a typical Old World Jewish couple. And my grandmother was basically a modern woman. She wore -- like, she was a flapper. She had a very fashionable bob in the '20s. And ended up running a restaurant called Frenchy's Dip at the top of Bunker Hill in LA, what's now -- what was Bunker Hill is not there anymore. I mean, I think they leveled it off. 3:00But you could take Angels Flight, which was this funicular that went up the side of the hill. And she had a restaurant up there. And so, there was this -- a lot of cousins. My mom had a lot of cousins. And since the age span of the family was very big, my mom had cousins who were, like, twenty years older than her. I mean, there was a huge age span. So, I grew up with all these cousins -- from her generation, sort of, but her generation was quite big, so. So, that's sort of my family. And maybe you're interested to know about how much Yiddish there was or something in the family.

CW:Well, first --

LS:Yeah.

CW:-- just, are there any -- did you get a sense of what your -- what life was like in the Old Country? Were there any stories passed down through the family or anything?

LS:Not really too many. I mean, my grandmother came as a very young woman. And I 4:00think that there wasn't -- she didn't remember all that much. And, of course, you know, you always think about how you wish you had asked them this or that. One of my cousins did an oral history interview with the oldest sibling, my aunt Eva, and that -- I've heard some of that. But again, it's like, in the old days, I think -- (laughs) in the old days -- people didn't necessarily think in those ways. Especially laypeople who weren't -- it wasn't their business or their specialty of doing these kinds of interviews. So, I have little fragments. And I went to visit where my family's from a few years ago. And it was interesting to kind of see, you know, (laughs) where they came from and imagine what -- it was so depressing that even though it's a good deal of time later than when they 5:00were there, if it's like that now, I can only -- can't really imagine what it was like when they were there. But I don't know -- have that much information about when they lived there.

CW:And was there Yiddish language and culture around in -- growing up?

LS:There was certainly Yiddish language. And mostly spoken by my grandmother's generation. The kids didn't -- my mom's and her cousins and her brother -- didn't grow up speaking Yiddish in the home or anything. What they did do was they went to a shule [secular Yiddish school], and given that my mom was born in 1933, what was happening was that she went to a shule where she learned -- had an hour of Hebrew and an hour of Yiddish. And it was taught by a husband and wife. And, in fact, the husband, David Yaroslavsky, taught at LA Hebrew High 6:00School, where I went to school -- you know, extra school thing, an afterschool program. And he taught Yiddish there. And his wife taught Hebrew. And their son is now a city councilman in Los Angeles and has been so for many years. So, it's an interesting connection.

CW:Can you describe the home you grew up in? Was it a very Jewish home?

LS:Well, what happened was that my father was from -- grew up in Chicago. And his mother was from -- as I understand it -- was from Lithuania. And as I understand is the case with a lot of people, she didn't have enough money; she had at least four kids, I think. Twins, my father and his brother, and at least 7:00two sisters, I think. And she was in a financial situation where the kids were in a Jewish orphanage. The sons, for sure. And she would go and visit them every day. And what happened was it really soured my father on cultural identification. So, when they ended up in Los Angeles, basically it wasn't until -- although my mom grew up in a culturally Jewish community and had the language around her and had -- some of my cousins and her aunts and uncles were musical. So, there was both the music and the language. But as far as anything other than that, when my parents split up, and my mom had moved to a suburb of LA, she 8:00ended up joining the largest local synagogue. And in that community, she sort of really took to that. So, my mom sort of got into the kind of religious, Conservative religious aspect of American Jewish life. And also started practicing a lot of traditional stuff that you would do in the home, like celebrating Passover, Pesach, and cooking the Jewish dishes that she had learned from her mother. And you know, my mom's kugel is kind of legendary. And also my grandmother's blintzes. And so, there's certain things that were kind of in our family tradition that she continued. So, that was sort of the Jewish life that I grew up with was this thing in the suburb of LA where it was based on the stuff 9:00that was going on in the Conservative synagogue. So, I was studying Hebrew; I went to Hebrew school; I went to Sunday school; I went to LA Hebrew High School. And I did both, which was kind of unusual, 'cause most kids either did one or -- kind of one or the other after bar mitzvah age, and I did all of that, all the way through high school.

CW:Can you tell me a little bit more about the food in your home?

LS:Well, I mean, in -- the '60s was certainly the age of -- the height of convenience food. And my mom was a full-time -- my mom was a single mom with three kids. And -- (clears throat) excuse me. My mom was a single mom with three kids. And a lot of times we were left to our own devices. So, we would, you know, eat Kraft macaroni and cheese and TV dinners and all that kind of stuff. And my mom also -- even though we were in this Conservative synagogue, we didn't 10:00keep kosher. And my mom used to make things like ham steaks, and she used to make these shrimp with butter and paprika and garlic in the broiler. It's pretty fancy for a suburban (laughs) Jewish household. But we ate pretty -- I mean, kind of simple food. And the kind of Jewish food was kind of saved for special occasions, really, for Pesach and for Shevuos and for Hanukkah. And those were the times when my mom hauled out the other stuff. And she'd make -- she made chicken soup sometimes, and there was a cookbook that was popular in LA called "From Noodles to Strudels," which was put together by the Beverly Hills chapter 11:00of Hadassah. So, she would make all these recipes from that. So, there was a recipe for mock strudel, I mean, these little cookies that were suppo-- they're like rugelach, basically. But so, that's sort of the kind of Jewish food that we had around.

CW:Um-hm. And the kugel, that was a famous --

LS:The famous kugel. Yeah, the famous kugel. But again, it's like, you eat kugel generally -- especially like a lokshn [noodle] kugel, like a sweet lokshn kugel, you make for special occasions. There's a -- can I tell a story?

CW:Yeah!

LS:Okay. So, there's a story that my sister used to tell about my mom, is that -- my sister lives in the other end of Los Angeles, and -- with her husband, and she has two kids. And her husband, they're trying -- her husband had issues with his cholesterol. So, my sister was making a kugel for Shevuos, I guess. And she 12:00called my mom up, and she said, "Mom, what would you do -- how would you make this kugel low-fat? How would you make it more healthy?" And my mom said, "Leigh, how often do you eat kugel? (laughs) Like, you only eat kugel maybe once a year. So, why -- you know, it won't be the same kugel." And so, then my sister said that she -- anyway, so she -- my sister tried to make it more healthy. And she uses low-fat this and high-fiber that. And she said it was all right, but it wasn't the kugel. So -- (laughs) so that's the story about my mom's kugel.

CW:And were there particular aspects of Jewish culture that you connected to as a kid, that were important to you?

LS:Well, at the time, I would say what appealed to me, which was sort of what 13:00was available to me, which was Israeli culture. So, Israeli popular music, you know, what we would call sort of Israeli folk songs, which are not folk songs in the strict sense that they're unknown authors. It's like -- they're contemporary creations. So -- and Israeli folk dance. Because that's sort of what was available to me as cultural Jewish expression. So, I sort of gravitated toward that. And what happened was that when I was in -- when I was about fifteen, my sister was having her bas mitzvah. And things had started to change in the synagogue, and they decided that it would be okay to have music in the shul if 14:00it was Jewish music. And so, with a couple of classmates of mine, I put together a band. And most of what we played was Israeli folk dance music, of course. But then, the clarinet player had heard -- on the radio, he'd heard some klezmer -- what we would call klezmer music, some instrumental clarinet music. And he found these books, the Kammen -- what we would call fake books, like with -- you know, simple versions of klezmer tunes written out. So, we played some of these tunes. And at that time, it's like, I didn't know how any of that related to any of the other things that I knew. Like, the cantor in the shul that we went to, for 15:00instance, was kind of an old-fashioned cantor. I had no idea that -- how it really related to what he was singing. Or this old gentleman in his eighties who taught bar mitzvah boys Torah reading. And so, I didn't know how it related to him. And it wasn't until later that I found out how all this stuff was connected. But that was -- sort of the way I started to get into Yiddish music was through that. But really, the Jewish music that I grew up with was this Israeli music. And we had a few LPs of Yiddish songs. And early on, some LPs of klezmer bands: first Klezmorim record, the Klezmer Conservatory Band record, and things like that.

CW:Was there a lot of music in the home growing up? I mean, you listened to those records --

LS:Yeah.

CW:-- but was there music in your family?

LS:Well, my mom was a -- she was always musical. She took piano lessons when she was a kid. And in the early '60s, she started playing -- you know, was the beginning of the American folk music boom, and she found a guitar teacher, and she started -- he taught her how to play folk guitar. And she used to sing us -- I used to -- (laughs) I joke that she used to sing us murder ballads to go to sleep, sing these -- "John Henry" and these -- "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" and all these kinds of folk songs that would have been popular, that people would have been learning at the time. And by her example, I started playing the guitar -- I taught myself to play the guitar -- and I took piano lessons. And you know, my 17:00mom really liked music. And so, I really also was very fond of playing the guitar and playing the piano and singing, and I started to sing at a very early age. And my mom had a small record collection. She had been collecting records since I think she was a teenager. So, she had 78s, and she had some interesting things that were from my grandmother's restaurant, from the jukebox. So, she had that. And then, I was buying -- I was listening to a lot of American singer-songwriting music, and of course, the Beatles. And so, I started to collect records as well. And there was constantly music going on. It was like -- 18:00I was playing records all the time if I wasn't singing and playing myself.

CW:So, we've been talking about your background.

LS:Um-hm.

CW:Looking back, were there specific values that you felt that your family/community was trying to instill in you relating to Jewishness?

LS:Well, I mean, I think there was a lot of that coming from --- from one thing, from the synagogue where we went. And also, basically, I think from my family. I mean, my family used to get together for every holiday, and also even when there weren't holidays, my aunt, the oldest sister of my grandmother, had what was a farmhouse in Van Nuys, California, in the Valley. And it had started off as a -- 19:00she raised chickens for eggs. And they were one of the big suppliers of eggs to the area at one time. So, we had all these family gatherings at her house. So, you know, the kind of thing that family is important and that you kind of support each other and that sort of thing, that, sure. I had some sense of that from my family's gatherings. And from things that people talked about at shul.

CW:So, how did you go from having sort of Israeli folk music being your -- sort of what was the -- mostly around to becoming more interested in Yiddish music in --

LS:Well, there were a few things that happened around the time that I decided to move to New York. I moved to New York in -- on Halloween of 1983. And a couple of things had happened within the couple of years before that. I had attended two universities. I attended USC and UCLA. And people generally -- since I was a singer -- at USC, I was a music education major, and my voice was my principal instrument. And at UCLA, I was a voice major. And generally, people didn't exactly know what to make of me. 'Cause my voice didn't really fit into any category that already existed. And I think that now in a university setting, 21:00people recognize that there are lots of different ways of being a singer and being a professional singer and that you can train someone to do different kinds of singing, depending on where their strengths lie. In those days -- you know, it's like, either you were a classical singer or you didn't belong in the university setting. So, there was sort of that kind of thing. I got involved with the gay and lesbian synagogue in Los Angeles, and I worked there as a cantor for a couple of years. And I don't know -- like, all this stuff is -- I don't know the exact chronological (laughs) order of a lot of this stuff, so I'll kind of ramble a bit.

CW:That's fine.

LS:So, I met this other guy who was attending there who was also a singer and 22:00played guitar and piano. And we were both, at the time, interested in kind of political folk music. We had a lot of interest in the women's music movement that had sort of blossomed in the '70s. Singers like Cris Williamson and Holly Near and Meg Christian. And so, we were sort of interested in both our kind of -- the Jewish music and also this political music. So, we formed a duo and we did this tour where we toured around the United States for about four months. Singing Israeli songs and these folk songs and all these kinds of things. So, 23:00that sort of -- going from one place to another and seeing all these different cities -- and I hadn't really traveled outside of Los Angeles -- seeing all these places where there was a much stronger sense of Jewish identity of a city. I mean, you know, the major cities -- the older the city was, the stronger the Jewish identity was. And when I finally got to New York, it was -- complete eye-opener. I mean, we were driving over one of the bridges into Manhattan, and we turned on the radio, and it was WEVD, and it was the Art Raymond "Simcha," which was a show that was on every day. And they were playing Yiddish music on the radio. And that was kind of a shock, because it's like, I'd never heard Jewish radio in such a major way in LA. So, that sort of put the idea in my head that I would want to move to New York. The other thing that happened was that I 24:00had gotten involved -- sort of through Israeli folk dancing, I had gotten involved in the Balkan folk dance scene. And I had done some folk dancing with a couple of performer groups, Israeli folk dancing. And I got involved in this -- in the Balkan scene. And I got involved with a couple of performing dance groups in LA. And through kind of that scene, I went to sort of a men's singing class, which kind of was a pretty rare thing, because most of the vocal music that you were hearing that was a Balkan vocal music was the style that kind of came to be known when the -- that series of recordings, "The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices" -- when those became popular. It was that style of singing that you mostly 25:00heard, and it was mostly women singing. But there's a huge tradition of men's singing styles from all over the world. So, I went to this workshop. And the workshop was taught by Michael Alpert. And it was kind of obvious that of the people -- of all the people who were at this workshop that I was the only one -- I mean, maybe it was five or six people -- and it was kind of obvious that I was really the only one who was, like, a singer with a capital S. So afterwards, he kind of took me aside, and he said, "I want to play something for you." And so, he puts on this record. Well, it was a cassette. And this voice comes out of the machine. And it was Kapelye performing "Yoshke furt avek [Yoshke is leaving]." And I said, "Who's that?" And he said, "It's me." And I was completely surprised because -- for one thing, because the -- kind of the quality of his voice on the 26:00recording and so many things about it were very different than what we were learning from him. I mean, the style was completely different. And I immediately was really drawn to it. I hadn't really heard any older recordings of Yiddish singers. I'd basically heard Theodore Bikel, Martha Schlamme, and the Barry Sisters, I guess. So, first of all, to hear that -- and second of all, his voice reminded me a lot of me, of myself. And I thought, Oh. Wow. I mean, maybe that's something I could do. So, that sort of was in the -- planted a seed in the back of my head. So that, and having done this trip with Elliot Pilshaw, and ending up in New York, it's like, I sort of had decided that what I was gonna do was 27:00that I was gonna move to New York. And my oldest friend, who was an artist who I -- who had gone to school in Chicago, had moved to New York. So, all these things just really made me decide that I was gonna move to the East Coast. And that's what I did. So, that's sort of how I -- that's sort of how -- the genesis of how I got to New York.

CW:And then, what happened when you got to New York?

LS:Well, when I got to New York I sort of floundered around for a bit. I got a job working at Tower Records when it first opened in the East Village. I worked in the classical department. And I met this guy who was a countertenor who sang 28:00early music, Medieval and Renaissance and Baroque music. And so, we ended up being together for four years. And sort of I was doing that, and I got involved with this brass band that played Balkan dance music. And I also was working at a photography studio as an assistant. And basically just kind of trying this, that, and the other thing. So, I was singing some early music, I was singing Balkan music, and through the Balkan scene, I think I also met some people who were involved in the Yiddish music scene. And through this woman Becky Miller, 29:00who was involved with this band called Klezmeydlekh, I kind of -- I replaced her at YIVO as the assistant to the assistant director. The assistant director at the time was Adrienne Cooper. And so, I was sort of hired as a jack-of-all-trades, just kind of to do this and that and typing and stuff. And then, when I -- around that time, in the brass band, one day Frank London came to a rehearsal. He had just moved back to New York after having been in Boston for many years. And he came and sat in with the brass band. And a few weeks later, I think, I ran into him at this restaurant called Mogador. It's still 30:00there. It's a Moroccan restaurant. And every Wednesday night they had live music and a belly dancer. And so, it was a sort of a local hang-- I'm gonna have to clear my throat. (clears throat) Sorry.

CW:Do you want me to get you a glass of water?

LS:I'm okay, I think.

CW:Okay.

LS:So, I ran into Frank at Mogador. And he said he had seen that I played the accordion. He didn't actually know that I was a singer; he just knew that I played the accordion. He said, "Would you be interested in being in a klezmer band?" And I didn't really -- other than what I knew from LA and the little klezmer music I had heard from this sort of first wave of klezmer bands -- you know, like Kapelye and Klezmer Conservatory Band and such -- I said, "Uh, o-- okay." (laughs) I figured it would be a way to earn some extra money and -- you 31:00know, play weddings or something. So, I came to what turned out to be the first rehearsal of the Klezmatics. And there were the six of us. It was me, Margot Leverett, Alicia Svigals, Frank, and Dave Licht, and Dave Lindsay was a bass player. And that was the first rehearsal of the band that became the Klezmatics. So, that's how I got involved with the Klezmatics. And I was working at YIVO. And I realized that if the band -- when the band started to get a bit more serious, I realized that I would -- that I should probably be studying Yiddish, which hadn't ever occurred to me before. But I really decided that I -- if I was 32:00gonna get good at anything -- because since I had been dabbling in this and that and the other thing, I sort of realized that I was gonna have to sort of try and focus on this one thing. So, I took the intensive Yiddish program at YIVO. And gradually, I drifted into becoming the coordinator for KlezKamp, the Yiddish folk arts program. And I ended up being the Yiddish typesetter at YIVO, and I ended up focusing all my musical energy on the Klezmatics.

CW:So, can you describe what YIVO was like when -- at the time when you were there? YIVO sort of has these different historic phases.

LS:Yeah.

CW:What was it like when you were there?

LS:Well, when I was at YIVO -- the first seven years that I was there, which was from, like, 1987 to '94, it was sort of, in a way, a transitional period because there were still -- some of the old guard of the Vilna YIVO were still there. So, it was interesting to meet all these -- some people (laughs) who had been partisans and made bombs, and people who had learned Yiddish through the YIVO in Vilna who weren't even originally Yiddish speakers but who came to the language -- you know, much the way that my generation did. Plus -- so there were these -- this old guard of YIVO, and then there were all these people who were, like, my age who were sort of learning about what was at YIVO, where the material came 34:00from, the importance of it, and thinking of ways to get these cultural artifacts available to people. So, I was working there, Jeff Shandler, Henry Sapoznik, Jenny Romaine, Daniel Soyer, Michael Alpert, Jeff Salant, Roberta Newman. It was a big list of people -- Zachary Baker -- of relatively young people who were pretty idealistic and really curious and excited and creative. All these people were there at the same time. So, that was pretty amazing.

CW:How did the sort of old guard react to all of you?

LS:Well, I think that there was -- and, of course, Adrienne Cooper and Sam Norich -- I think, in a way, they were ambivalent because on the one hand they certainly wanted people to be able to use the materials, and for people to continue collecting materials to add to the collections, and for YIVO to have a presence. But I think that they were also very protective. So, I think it was difficult for a lot of them. And, of course, the Yiddish speaking level of the people -- of all these younger adults ranged from people who were completely 36:00fluent to people who really didn't speak at all. So, I think that there was that sort of thing. So, it was comfortable in its (laughs) kind of discomfort and dysfunctionis-- dysfunctionality, if that's a word. It's like, when YIVO first start-- when I was there, I think there were three different computer systems, three or four different computer systems. Because no one could really decide which way to go with computers. And then, there were people who -- some people who were conversant in typing Yiddish on the computer, some people who could never get the hang of it. And the building was really inappropriate for -- it 37:00was a nice building; it was on Fifth Avenue and Eighty-Sixth Street, so it was right in the middle of the museum district, and it was this beautiful old mansion. But it was always kind of dingy and (laughs) a little -- not really appropriate for the treasures that were being stored there. They really needed to deal with that. But it was sort of -- in a way, I suppose it kind of reminded them of Vilna, in a way, because of how it was set up.

CW:So, once you started sort of having more exposure to older Yiddish recordings --

LS:Yeah.

CW:-- were there any cantors that you particularly attached yourself to, or --

LS:Well, I wasn't really drawn very much to cantorial music at all. There are 38:00certain cantors who do -- who did record more popular songs. But cantorial music itself wasn't something that I grew to be able to appreciate until really much later, partially 'cause it's -- the intensity of it, it's -- I mean, still -- these days, it's like, I can listen to it a little at a time. But it's very intense, emotional stuff. And at the time, it's like, it was sort of the last thing that I really wanted to listen to. The things that I was drawn to were some kind of, like, American Borscht Belt material. Because I'm -- I mean, I'm an American Jewish guy. So, that stuff I found kind of fun and interesting. The thing about the Klezmatics was that we sort of decided -- once we figured out 39:00what it was we wanted to do and that we could actually make a contribution to the music that was unique and personal, we sort of had a tacit understanding that we were going to stay away from kind of the theater repertoire. Just because it's mostly kinds of emotions that we didn't identify with. And all the best singers and writers that you can think of speak in their own voice -- I mean, literally and the way that they write. So, it was kind of -- at the time, in -- the band started in '86. So, in the late '80s, the idea that you could actually be individual within the music was something that hadn't really been 40:00explored for a very long time. So, the idea that you could now have personalities within the music, that it was okay to be quirky, that it was okay to write songs within the tradition but that expressed points of view, or to sing songs that expressed a point of view that you agreed with, and to sing them with an individual voice or with an individual instrumental tambour or style or such things. So, what I was drawn to was really singers whose voices I could identify with. Like, when I heard -- the first time I heard Michael Alpert singing Yiddish material, I was drawn to people whose voices I could emulate. So, Seymour Rexite; Shimon Ossovitzky, who's a Yiddish singer who ended up in 41:00Israel; Menasha Oppenheim. The thing is that what was available at the time -- and it's like, I didn't really even touch on the field recordings of Ruth Rubin and Ben Stonehill, and Hasidic material -- I didn't touch on that stuff -- I didn't get to that stuff till later. In a way, sort of in the same way that the Jewish music that I listened to when I was a kid was Israeli music because it was what was available. So, when I came to New York, a lot of the field recordings weren't really available -- not that they didn't exist, but that I didn't know how to get at them. They were kind of tucked away in the stacks. So, I didn't really know how to access them. It was much easier when I worked on the 42:00fifth floor of the YIVO building -- when I was a graphic designer and I was working on KlezKamp, it was much easier -- you know, there were these piles and piles of 78s. And after hours, I would find things, like, Oh! Well, that's interesting. And I would put it on a turntable and stick a cassette in, and I would be continuously making copies of these records. But things that I particularly was interested in. So, that's sort of how I found stuff that I liked.

CW:And so, you mentioned a few names. Was there one that was sort of someone that you were trying to emulate?

LS:Well --

CW:Or connect to, I guess.

LS:-- the ones that I mentioned and of course, Aaron Lebedeff. You know, 43:00everybody wants to sound like Aaron Lebedeff. But then you try to sing like Aaron Lebedeff, and you realize that -- what a unique singer he was. But the thing is that you don't know until you try, so you sort of try out those sorts of things, and you kind of figure out what -- the things that they do that you can use, stylistic elements or linguistic ideas or phraseology and things like that. And if -- you can't be them, but you can certainly take away things that can help you get to be who you are musically and express that. So, there was a lot of that going on in the early days of the band.

CW:So, you mentioned that there are some sort of emotions from the Yiddish 44:00theater world that you didn't want to connect to.

LS:Yeah.

CW:Can you talk more about that? And was there -- did the Klezmatics have sort of a mission of what you wanted to present?

LS:Well, I think we decided that we didn't -- a lot of the Yiddish theater songs that are most popular are these sort of memory songs about various towns: Belz or Zlatopil or Slutsk or Yas. You know, these are songs that speak to experiences that we didn't have as thirty-somethings living in New York who had basically kind of come from everywhere. And it seemed kind of false to present that sort of material. If you have a choice of anything that you can sing, why 45:00would I want to sing a song about Romania that says that the guy who kisses his own wife is a nutcase? You know, it's sort of like, well, it's not -- I don't know if that song is true for anybody, but it's certainly not true for me. And so, I felt like, I don't need to sing fantasy songs about the Old Country because I didn't -- because there's so many other things I could do. And it's funny to think that that is some sort of radical idea. But at the time, you know, it kind of was. It's like, you -- early on, we would have -- people would say, like, Why don't you play "Mayn shtetele belts [My little town of Belz]"? Why don't you play "Rumania"? Why don't you play "Hava nagilah"? Why don't you -- you know. And that's -- the main reason is that I don't believe what those 46:00songs have to say. And also, there are people who do perform those songs who do -- if they don't believe what they have to say, they are pretty good at giving the impression that they do. And so, I thought, Well, it's not as if these songs have to be sung by me. It's like, someone else can sing them, and I can sing things that have resonance with me. And if they don't exist, we can write them. After a certain point, if you feel comfortable enough, as if you're sort of part of -- comfortable enough with the music that you feel like you're part of the tradition, it's like, then you can say, You know, okay, well, I can write -- there's enough people now who can write -- who are writing songs or who are writing lyrics -- you can write with them. You can take an older song and change the lyrics so they reflect your point of view. You can sing older songs that are 47:00universal in a way that speaks to you personally. You know, labor songs -- I mean, what they have to say doesn't really go out of fashion. And some of them have the most beautiful music, and the lyrics are really strong, and there are things that they say -- have basic human truths and sentiments that people can relate to. In a way that something like "Rumania, Rumania," it's not the same kind of thing. It's a much deeper kind of expression. So, you know. So, playing this music is not just about entertaining people. It's sort of having a dialogue with the audience. So, as we got started doing that, it became -- and we saw how 48:00audience reacted to that -- it really became much -- you know, what we were about.

CW:So, you mentioned sort of in passing, "Oh, I decided I wanted to study Yiddish."

LS:Yeah.

CW:But obviously that's more -- that's a big decision --

LS:Yeah.

CW:-- and a big challenge to learn a language.

LS:Right, right.

CW:So, how did things change once you started having that language knowledge, and how did your relationship to the music change at all, if --

LS:Well, for one thing, it's -- I think the first Yiddish song I sang was probably -- with the band -- was probably "Mazl," the theater song. I think it's Olshanetsky. And there's a famous recording by Seymour Rexite. And, you know. 49:00So, that was sort of the first song that I tried. When I sang that, I really didn't know anything -- how the language was constructed. I didn't know -- necessarily know the difference between what was a verb and what was a noun (laughs) or what was an adjective, or, like, the sentence structure, or what -- the peculiarities of singing in Yiddish and how it's different than the equal sentence in English because you put the stress on a different thing. Different things are important. And it's like, a lot of times in Yiddish the verb is the thing that you focus on, for instance, rather than the noun -- but they're quirks that you don't get until you start working with the language. So, those are the sorts of things that I -- it was a tool, tools that I needed to do my 50:00work. And also, just to be able -- if I found a song that I liked, it's like -- I mean, I still -- my Yiddish still isn't good enough that I am completely independent. I always am having to ask someone else who knows better than me. But it's like, I can decipher a lot of things by myself. I can look at a book and understand basically what a given song is about. You know. It just was something that I needed to have -- I needed to have the knowledge to do it. And because of the person I am, when I first started studying Yiddish, one of the best things was that I had studied Hebrew for so many years. Because, first of 51:00all, I didn't have to learn the alef beys [alphabet], and then secondly, it's like, all the Hebrew words that I knew are -- a lot of them are in Yiddish, too. And so, I had sort of an advantage because of that, which was really great, because I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had that training. And also, the religious training that I had has really come in handy because there isn't that, like, a complete separation between religious stuff and secular stuff in Yiddish language and in the culture. It's like, you can't completely divorce the two. It's not possible. So, knowing all those things, it just was -- I feel like, Well, that was the reason that I studied all that stuff when I was in elementary and high school, was that now it's like, I can use it for this. 52:00And in a way, my relation to the music is much more organic for some reason, I guess, for that reason.

CW:You've mentioned some names of people that were around YIVO.

LS:Um-hm.

CW:When you -- did you have a particular teacher or mentor in learning the language?

LS:Well, my Yiddish teachers were Chava Lapin and Pesach Fiszman. And they couldn't have been -- (laughs) been more different. And Pesach was always one of my biggest fans and supporters. And if I would make mistakes, he was always very gentle about explaining to me what I had done wrong and how to fix it. And that was really nice because he was, just like you said, like a mentor. Adrienne was also that way. Both with regards to an example of how to interpret Yiddish songs 53:00with a contemporary sensibility, and also as far as -- you know, some of our material. Some of the band's best-known material from early on came from these classes that she taught in the zumer-program [summer program] when I was taking it, and we'd have these singing workshops where we would just learn song repertoire. And there are a couple songs that she taught. And since the band was sort of -- our wheels were spinning, and we were trying to come up with ways to kind of be -- kind of express ourselves through this music, and there were the accapella songs, and I heard them, and I couldn't understand why they had -- why 54:00those songs weren't better known and why everyone wasn't singing them. And I didn't under-- I really didn't get it. So, I said, "Well, I guess we could take those songs (laughs) and do that with them." So, that sort of -- I mean -- and a couple of the songs -- a few of the songs that I learned from her, they ended up being our biggest hits. And only because I saw in them something that other people hadn't, and I still do that. I still will hear something, and I'll go, "Why don't people know this song? Why hasn't it grabbed people's -- tickled people's imaginations, and why isn't it a big hit?" And the idea of hits in Yiddish (laughs) music is something that people -- I don't think had considered 55:00it when the band first started. I don't think people had considered those sort of things for a long time. So, that was pretty exciting. And now to hear other people interpreting songs that we kind of popularized, if you could say that -- and so it's really pretty gratifying.

CW:So, you've now sort of given me the connection to talk a little bit about the Klezmatics. You've now traveled all around the world --

LS:Uh-huh. Yeah.

CW:-- and is there a particular performance that really stands out as meaningful to you?

LS:Well, I mean, I think by consensus our favorite show was one (laughs) in this 56:00sweaty rock club in Ljubljana in -- I don't even remember what year it was. But it was one of those things where everything was just kind of perfect. And the audience was really listening and -- it's as if the audience was onstage with us. And it's really kind of the only time where everything was almost perfect. And so, that's sort of the gold standard for the band, that particular show. You know, other things that I'd say were kind of great shows were the show in the New Synagogue in Berlin with Chava Alberstein that was filmed for television. I 57:00mean, that was really special. Getting to do that project with her was really special. And there are some isolated instances of things like that. We've just -- we've done (laughs) so many concerts. It's kind of difficult to pick shows that stand out in the way.

CW:Of course, yeah.

LS:Yeah.

CW:So, I have a few questions about cultural revival and transmission.

LS:Okay.

CW:First of all, what is your take on that term, "cultural revival"?

LS:Well, (pause) it's funny -- I think generally we think of not that there was 58:00-- we're reviving it, exactly. I think that it's kind of inaccurate to describe what happened with the interest in klezmer and Yiddish culture as being a revival, exactly. But I think that it was more (laughs) like a resuscitation. It wasn't like it was completely dead or something. But we did -- we were picking up a thread. We were picking up a thread. I think kind of the biggest shame as a singer is that the kind of lineage of transmission and connection between a 59:00Jewish daily life and the language and singing has been lost, outside of the Hasidic community. And I think that that's a huge tragedy. It's like, in really any culture, including the Hasidic world, you can -- who are the great fado singers? Who are the great Tex-Mex singers? Who are the great Hasidic singers? It's like, you can go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. When you come to the Yiddish world, it's like, there aren't -- they're much fewer, and there is this 60:00disconnection between daily life and singing. And that's something that I don't think can ever be revived or resuscitated. I don't think it's possible. And that's really kind of a tragedy. I mean, as a song that we do with Woody Guthrie's lyrics, it's like, "I'm gonna get through this world the best I can." It's like, I can do what I can do, but that's about it. And I really -- as I've sort of looked at it, it's one of the things that kind of bugs me the most, is that we lost that particular connection. And all the singers that I could look 61:00up to were people who grew up speaking Yiddish, who grew up in places where everyone spoke Yiddish and everyone went to shul and everyone sang, and it -- so that's -- you know, I just wanted to say that. (laughs)

CW:Yeah. Well, you still work at YIVO --

LS:Um-hm.

CW:-- and you have connections with KlezKamp.

LS:Right.

CW:What --

LS:Well, actually, I took a hiatus from YIVO for seven years. I cofounded the organization Living Traditions with Henry Sapoznik, and both of us were let go from YIVO in 1994. Along with KlezKamp, which was kind of -- not the greatest 62:00move on YIVO's part, because it was really in many ways their most important contemporary calling card. So, what we did was we created a nonprofit to continue to run KlezKamp. So, I did that for seven years. And then, YIVO had made a transition where it had moved into the Center for Jewish History, and the sound archivist job became open, and I decided to apply for it because I was concerned about the accessibility and the future of the collection. And so, that's why I've been there now for about ten or eleven years, I guess. And I'm no longer involved with KlezKamp. You know, fourteen years of administrative duties is kind of enough. (laughs) And I felt like it was time for someone 63:00hopefully younger and with a different kind of energy than what I have would continue working on it. So, that's the story with that.

CW:Well, I wanted to ask --

LS:Yeah.

CW:-- given your involvement, past and present, with several of the organizations that are sometimes considered resources --

LS:Uh-huh.

CW:-- what do you -- from your perspective, how do you see the role of Yiddish organizations and music festivals and camps in the transmission of Yiddish culture?

LS:I think that they're -- I mean, I think that things like KlezKamp and KlezKanada and these various klez-fests in other parts of the world, I think they're extremely -- have been extremely important catalysts for sort of 64:00providing a surrogate life for Yiddish song and for Yiddish instrumental music. The fact that you now have people who grew -- have grown up hearing klezmer music and grown up singing Yiddish songs and grown up playing klezmer violin or fiddle or drums -- I mean, that's something that just didn't exist in -- I mean, KlezKamp started in '85. And it didn't exist in '85. It just wasn't there. There was nothing in place like that. So, that's really pretty gratifying. And it's really, really important that it continues and that it still exists. Because I 65:00think that it's a catalyst for so many things that are important to me and to the people in the Yiddish music community. Really, absolutely.

CW:Do you consider yourself an activist for Yiddish?

LS:Do I consider myself an activist? Yeah. I mean, I -- yeah. For sure. Yeah. (laughs) Absolutely. I know that there are people who have gotten involved with Yiddish music and with Yiddish singing because of what I've done. And that makes me -- whether that's what I intended, it's true. It's like, my actions have 66:00caused a reaction that -- a positive one, and that's -- in this case, a positive reaction.

CW:Looking at the sort of next generation --

LS:Um-hm.

CW:-- that have taken your work and sort of built off of it --

LS:Um-hm.

CW:-- how -- I mean, what do you think about the next generation of Yiddish artists?

LS:I'm glad to see that what we've done has influenced and inspired a lot of people to get involved with Yiddish music and to speak to the music in their own voice and try things that maybe other people have been -- not felt comfortable doing. I think that it's -- that people are taking Yiddish poetry and writing 67:00music to it or writing their own Yiddish poetry or trying fusions of different kinds that combine the music that they love with Yiddish music -- I think that that's great. And that people are doing in-depth study, things where they're getting grants to go study in Eastern Europe, I think that that's absolutely great.

CW:Just one more question, if that's okay.

LS:Okay, yeah.

CW:I'm just wondering -- well, do we have time for two questions?

LS:Yeah, sure.

CW:Okay. (laughs) How do you use Yiddish, and what is the role of Yiddish for you personally in your sense of Jewish identity and --

LS:Well, Yiddish is definitely my main language of musical expression. I sing more in Yiddish than I sing in any other language. And that's sort of beco-- provided some challenges when I sing in -- (laughs) for instance, when I sing in English, it's like I -- you know, I haven't actively sung a lot in English for so long that sometimes I have to sort of think about what that means in different kinds -- like, the enunciation isn't the same, and it's like, what used to come -- be difficult in Yiddish is now -- (laughs) it's turned around. Now I have to -- when we made -- we did two CDs of material in English with this Woody Guthrie project. And especially on "Wonder Wheel," the producer was kind 69:00of critical about my diction because he thought it was -- that it was too pristine. (laughs) So, I sort of had to be a little -- I had to learn to be a little bit sloppy. (laughs) So, that's one way that Yiddish is really important in my expression. And also sometimes as far as communicating with people, it's kind of handy to know what I do know of Yiddish language. It's useful for conversing with people or to interact with people. I mean, that's where it's useful to me, and that's where it comes in. I have three kids, and I don't -- we don't speak Yiddish at home or anything like that. But they do call me "tate [father]."

CW:Great. So, is there anything else that you wanted to be sure to say in this interview? I just have one last question for you.

LS:Um, no.

CW:Okay. So, what advice do you have for aspiring artists, future generations?

LS:I think that anyone who is considering working on Yiddish music -- I mean, I can speak as a singer. It's like, sing about what's important to you, and sing things that -- sing songs that you love or that you create that you -- that express who you are and what you want to say. And I don't think you can --- (laughs) you can't go wrong with that. I think that that's really a great thing to strive for.

CW:Well, a sheynem dank. Thank you so much.

[END OF INTERVIEW]