They started playing together in Symons\u2019 backyard with banjoist Aaron Gunn and bassist Stoo Odom, \u201cwithout any concept, really,\u201d said Symons, just playing what they wanted to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve sort of always had this eclectic approach,\u201d he said. \u201cDiscreet genres of music are mostly a marketing convenience. Musicians have always played and been influenced by whatever they heard, whatever was available, and whatever the public would pay them to play. Klezmer is a good example of this, being an amalgam of various musical styles from central and eastern Europe and, later, America. I doubt those old school musikers (you wouldn\u2019t call someone a klezmer in those days unless you were trying to get punched) were concerned with notions of \u2018authenticity\u2019 or genre. They were playing what they heard and liked, and what their public wanted to hear. We are at least doing the first part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n While Symon has \u201cgotten away from klezmer a bit these last few years, really since the pandemic started, mostly for lack of people to play it with,\u201d he said \u201cit\u2019s still the music closest to my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n Why that\u2019s the case, and why he\u2019s also been interested in Yiddish music, despite not being Jewish, is hard to put into words, he said. \u201cIn fact, if I could put it into words, maybe we wouldn\u2019t need music. It makes me feel good?\u201d<\/p>\n He said many people assume that a person is Jewish if they play klezmer, and even that it\u2019s a strange thing for a non-Jew to do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always felt this attitude contains an implicit condescension toward the music,\u201d said Symons. \u201cIt would never occur to anyone that if someone plays Rachmaninoff they must be Russian, or if they play bluegrass they must be a hillbilly, etc. The music stands on its own merits, whatever one\u2019s ethnic background. Most of the Jewish klezmorim I have known didn\u2019t grow up with the music any more than I did. Still, you have to be careful and respectful. I used to do a lot of Yiddish song and, though I love it, I do less of that now because I realized that, unless I am prepared to devote a few years of my life to learning the language, there\u2019s a lot of nuance that I\u2019m going to miss, no matter how much I work on my pronunciation.\u201d<\/p>\n Symons grew up in rural New Hampshire. \u201cMy father plays Latin percussion and guitar, but my folks were divorced and I didn\u2019t see him much, and I had very little interest in music until about 15,\u201d he said. \u201cI was into theatre and acting. Then, I more or less simultaneously discovered Tom Waits and classical music, particularly Beethoven, and suddenly fell in love with music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI played guitar for a few years, but the Waits album Frank\u2019s Wild Years <\/i>convinced me to get an accordion. This was pre-internet in rural New Hampshire, so I put an ad in the local paper asking if anyone had an accordion I could buy. It turned out a lot of people did, and I was very lucky to get something playable. Then, the accordion more or less sat around decoratively for the next couple of years until I happened to see Itzhak Perlman on David Letterman\u2019s show with a bunch of klezmer musicians. He had just released a klezmer album with the top American klezmer bands at the time, and I became obsessed with this music and went down a deep rabbit hole for the next 25 years or so. I taught myself accordion to play klezmer, largely while working in a parking garage in Burlington, Vt., which had nice, cathedral-like acoustics.\u201d<\/p>\n Symons acknowledged, \u201cOf course, no one is truly self-taught \u2013 that just means I\u2019ve learned a lot of little things from a lot of different people, without ever having any one teacher or mentor. As for my relationship with the accordion, the damn thing has gradually and sneakily taken over my life. They\u2019ll tell you that you can just pick it up for fun once and awhile and put it down whenever you want, no harm done, but don\u2019t believe them, kids! For many years, I tried to resist accordion clich\u00e9s and now, in my middle age, I own not one, but two pairs of lederhosen. I started fixing accordions when I moved to New Orleans and there was no one doing it here. Twelve years later, I am sitting in a room in my home with somewhere between 40 and 50 accordions around me, in various states of functionality. The accordions have won.\u201d<\/p>\n About the move to New Orleans, Symons said, \u201cI lived in Vermont for 15 years and was ready for something new. Or, in the case of New Orleans, something old and dirty. I had spent a month in here in 2003 when I was traveling around the country busking in this tiny, ancient Toyota camper. I always thought about going back and trying to live there. Loving New Orleans is like loving a complicated, brilliant, yet self-destructive person. Someone who might be utterly charming one day and destroy a hotel bathroom the next. I still feel like an outsider here most of the time, but I\u2019ve come to terms with that. I\u2019m happy that I\u2019m able to make myself useful to my fellow accordionists by keeping their instruments in working order.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/jun-28-music.28.Obliquestra-Dr.-Sick-David-Symons-Susanne-Ortner-photo-by-Stephanie-Reed.jpeg\")
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