The name may sound Hungarian, but this 2 CD set of classically oriented Jewish show music comes from Chicago. The "band" is named for a popular performing company from fin de siecle Vienna (The Budapest Orpheum Society) and its eight members range from cantor Deborah Bard to Bulgarian violinist Peter Blagoev to jazz-klez (a lá Maxwell Street Klezmer Band) to Hank Tausend. With Dancing On the Edge Of A Volcano, they present a spectrum of European Jewish sociopolitical songs -- some subtly so, ranging from early Viennese cabaret to Zionist songs from Israel. In an unusual format move, one of the CDs contains the songs in original Yiddish or German and the other in English. This allows the listener to hear what the song is actually about while listening, instead of with eyes glued to the liner notes. Unfortunately the Zionist songs in Hebrew are not reproduced this way, but are repeated verbatim on the second disc.
As the 43 pages of liner notes will tell you, these "popular" Viennese cabaret songs are complex and themselves danced in an economic balance during their heyday. Often based on oral tradition, the genre evolved from early modern Jewish wedding and theatre music and incorporated snips of familiar folk melodies as well as a sophisticated batch of exotic and non-Jewish contemporary influences. Meant to be used in a vaudeville hodgepodge, they incorporate stories and commentary into everyday settings. The early songs, often printed as anonymous broadsides, present very stereotypical and sometimes charming views of Jewish people, but also portray a relatively safe, if changing environment.
"If we Jews are sent off fighting
You will hear a dreadful moan.
Party's over! No firstnighting!
No one gets a business loan!"
goes "The Jewish Country Regiment." The songs here recall Broadway musicals (particularly "Fiddler On the Roof") and Tom Lehrer, and the set list even includes Irving Berlin's "Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars" in English, an American immigrant ballad with the same roots as its Viennese cousins.
By the thirties, however, the drums of Hades had begun to beat and though the songs are similar, there is a sense of uneasiness about them. Many are love songs, apparently with hidden meanings. The last song in this group, "Warning" (by Arnold Schoenberg!) suggests to a young girl, "Stop and think and please take care." Another, "Do A Little Dreaming," uses a tango arrangement and suggests love and dreams can provide relief from the increasing greyness of prewar life. During the World War II and the Holocaust, some composers were fortunate to be in exile, including the team of Brecht and Eisler who dominate the third section of the album. These dark, strident songs are hardly cute and are about trenches, Hitler, exile and solidarity, and they pack the punch of cigarette smoke in a dark bomb shelter. One very effective track that touches even non-Jews is "Ballad of the Jewish Whore, Marie Sanders," who was in the streets with a shaven head for loving a Jewish man.
The Zionist songs are different and though they don't integrate particularly well with the other tracks, they do provide a contrast. The lyrics were written by poets on site in the kibbutzes, and usually deal with landscape and work, more stereotypical of Socialists than European Jews. Eventually these songs were arranged by modern composers: Weill, Dessau, Milhaud, and even Aaron Copeland, who united a song of joy with a folk dance song in "Appalachian Spring" fashion.
The musicians here are quite skillful and the arrangements seem to be true to their original form, which in most cases was a mix of Eastern European Jewish and urban Viennese styles. The singers, baritone Stewart Figa and especially the women, mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley and soprano Deborah Bard, have classically trained voices. Still, they manage to inject quite a bit of character and color into their performances. My guess is that the people who sang these cabaret songs also had solid, trained voices or they would have been hit by rotten tomatoes once too often! It may, however, be difficult for a down-home folkie to appreciate this album as recreational music when faced with the double headed beast of show tunes and classical composers, although klezmer fans are more likely to appreciate this album. But whatever one's personal tastes, these CDs, and the massive liner notes, are really interesting, and a trip through the entire album, especially the English disc, can be a moving, if chilling, experience.
