The Pestiside Instant Interview: Bob Cohen

Not many people could or would claim that they helped set back the clock in Hungary a century, but Bob Cohen can, and does. The 49-year-old, Bronx-born Cohen is the leader of local Klezmer phenomenon Di Naye Kapelye, who are playing their first public performance in Budapest since 1998 tonight at Kuplung. Unlike most of the bands that cater to the roots tourists and handful of others who crave Yiddish folk music in Hungary, Di Naye Kapelye is determinedly old-style, cranking out selections from a repertoire they have built "running around Eastern Europe and Brooklyn with a tape recorder looking for old Magyar Jewish music." (You can hear some tracks here.) Then again, the shock of the old is sometimes so bracing it can best be described in terms of the new; Cohen playfully calls Di Naye Kapelye's style "the Ramones getting kosher in 1910." In addition to being a granddaddy of the local Klezmer scene, Cohen is a wizened old member of Hungary's international community, having arrived in Budapest in 1988 to study Hungarian folk music. (He apparently got his taste for it from his mother's family, who left Hungary in 1944.) After the obligatory year teaching English, he spent some time at Budapest Week, back when the weekly was the center of expat life in Hungary. Below is what Cohen has to say about the current Jewish music scene in Budapest, among other hot-button issues.

How would you describe the current Klezmer scene in Hungary?
There is none. There is a core of people who have brought "clarinet-y" music from Germany and other parts of Europe, but it isn't really Jewish - it's easy, jazz-like music that is called "Klezmer." As opposed to learning traditional music that is actually part of a culture. You have to go out and find the old guys, and play for people who are drunk and having fun... that's the whole point.

Why is this the case?
It's believed to be an easy commercial sell, and people want an easy musical identity symbol. So when people want to see "tap-dancing Jews," they call a Klezmer band. We often joke that in Europe Klezmer is a music played by non-Jews. We're Jews.

But there was a good scene at some point?
Yeah. In the early 1990s, there was a five-year period when everything was changing. There were a lot of kids were being told you are not Hungarian, you are Jewish. Also, back then folk music had not been co-opted as a right-wing media symbol. There was a much broader appeal than there is now. The generation that was in college then, they had a five-year window when they were opening up to everything. The control mechanism didn't kick in until 1995. You could open a bar and önkormányzat [local government] and the nénis didn't close it down - they didn't know how. I've been here since 1988, and my view of Hungary now is that it's like 1988 all over again.

We've heard rumors that you guys have been shut out by the more establishment-friendly players in the scene. Any truth to that?
No comment.

So what is the average audience at the average Klezmer night in Budapest like now?
I don't know. For us, it's either the alternative kids, or the Hasids [ultra-orthodox Jews]. But there are also pot-smoking Hasids, believe it or not.

Pot-smoking Hasids? Awesome! What's up in general with the Black Hats in Budapest?
Well [the big story] is that last year the Lubavitchers [a New York-based ultra-orthodox sect] convinced the government that they should be recognized as [the legal successors] of "status quo ante," [one of the major strains in 19th Century Hungary Jewry] and the government said okay. They pulled a fast one on the government and the Jewish community. And the orthodox Jewish community is incensed.

What about the recorded music scene?
There's also not much. When you talk about really Jewish Hungarian music… there is some interesting regional stuff that comes out of Jerusalem and New York. I'll go buy their cassettes. They usually have a guy playing a Yamaha organ. We remove the Yamaha organ.

You play at orthodox weddings here in Budapest. What are those like?
There is not a large community. But every summer there is at least one big orthodox wedding. What happened after World War II is that Gypsies played at these weddings. So 60 years after the holocaust it is hard to find people who know how to play this stuff. But because we have been playing in our retro-folk style at these weddings it is standard now to have an acoustic fiddle and base band with cimbalom. We re-established the tradition. So we like to say we're setting music back 100 years.