What Can We Learn From the Poles?
How Do They Do it?
There's an alternate universe where Jewish musical folklore is uncovering lost melodies from poorly documented places and reviving them. A place where old informants are interviewed who still remember some of the pre-holocaust traditions. Where new bands emerge and record these Jewish tunes, experimenting with how to present them and make them new, and all of it seems to be greased by vital assistance from cultural organizations.
That universe is Poland.
I don't get it. There appears to be a steady and vibrant interest in Jewish music in Poland. There are tsimbl players and fiddlers and poyk players. There are "zydowska" tunes on almost every new album (how Jewish some of these Jewish tunes are is worthy of discussion). Heck, there are still albums! But they never talk to us, and we don't talk to them.
It's weird.
At the center of the scene is Andrezj Bienkowski, who has said some at least some sympathetic things about his adventures uncovering Jewish traditions in the Polish countryside. Bienkowski has been a one man powerhouse in recovering some absolutely mindblowing rural musicians. Folks have rallied to his cause and there are what look like several cultural institutions devoted to preserving and maintaining these traditions.
There are young bands with rustic aesthetics who play for lively dances. There are even music labels (plural!) that put out the music regularly. We can't even sustain one label to provide for what are probably the best klezmer musicians to ever walk the planet. They have organizations which have an active media presence and are constantly presenting and lending their clout to young artists. Beautifully produced videos. Amazing online archives. We have a bunch of randos posting from time to time as separate, disorganized and self-proclaimed "geeks" (myself included). Hell, they even put out entire albums of Jewish Music and produce documentaries on Jewish music: "Jewish Music in Memory of Rural Musicians" and "Jewish musicians Simsia" (about the history of music-making brothers from the Radom region, ever heard of them?). Neither film has ever been seen by anyone I know and are currently unavailable.
I've tried to reach out a few times, but never got a reply from any of them. I don't blame them- I'm a rando myself. But at this point it's a bit ridiculous that there isn't any higher level contact (maybe there is?) This is starting to feel like my high school lunchroom. What’s even stranger is that some bigwigs in Jewish culture have important jobs in Poland and they seem completely uninterested in facilitating any connections.
There’s a lot of emotions around Poland’s new philosemitism and the backlash against it. I guess I’m more mercenary. I don’t want to marry them, I just want to know what they’ve discovered. We’ve seen the same dynamic with the blues in this country. A lot of the 1950s/60s blues scholars were crazy alienated white people and had all manner of bizarre and offensive political and cultural opinions. In the end, it’s their research and their cultural salvage that has lasted. The weirdo stuff should be remembered, if for no other reason than that it might tell us something important about our own motivations (see Chris Thomas King’s work on eugenics and blues), but throwing out the work they did on, say, Skip James or Leadbelly won’t help anyone.
At any rate, the Poles are doing things! Ya gotta give it up to their many wonderful organizations, their lovely graphics, their wood-lined dance halls, their vibrant scene. How do they do it? National grants? Rich patrons? Low overhead? Are they all secret scary trad right-wingers? Nice gentle lefty artistic types? Who knows? C’mon Polish folks, we’ll be nice, I promise.
