Sound
of His Soul
His
virtuosity is legendary, his versatility stunning.
And as always, Andy Statman's roots are showing.
adapted
from Sara
Eisen’s
essay
in
the Jerusalem
Report
HAD
THERE BEEN a
planetarium in 19th-century Galicia, or a kosher
deli in Depression-era Kentucky, Andy
Statman's
music might have been playing in the background.
Meandering through time, geography and culture
in a few passionate, organic gusts of music, neither
the man nor his inimitable hybrid sound has a very
clearly defined "before" or "after."
Statman,
one of his generation's premier mandolinists and
clarinetists thinks of his compositions as "a spontaneous,
American-roots form of very personal, prayerful hasidic
music, by way of avant-garde jazz." This small, modest
man takes for granted that a performer might embody
several worlds in his art, and seems not to recognize
that his music, like his story, is extraordinary.
Statman's
musical soul journey began early, when he was a child
in Queens, not far from his current home in Flatbush,
Brooklyn. Born into a family with a long line of
cantors and some well-known professional musicians
in the family tree, young Andy grew up singing hasidic
melodies in the afternoon Jewish school his otherwise
secular parents sent him to, and listening to show
tunes, klezmer, classics —and every other variety
of music playing within earshot.
Indeed,
Statman the boy had ravenous ears, absorbing the
early sounds of rock and roll and the beginnings
of the folk revival. But after his brother brought
home a vintage country record by Lester
Flatt and Earl
Scruggs,
Andy's obsession became bluegrass, which he would
tune into from West Virginia via shortwave radio.
He sent away for a method booklet, and picked up
the guitar and banjo on his own. In a number of
years, his fervent fingers would walk this boy—briefly —to
Nashville.
Andy
Statman and David Grisman
A
possessed Statman found mandolin master David
Grisman in
1965, in a Greenwich Village teeming with young
musicians at the heart of the resurgence of folk
culture, and asked him for lessons. Grisman, with
whom he would record and coproduce "Songs of Our
Fathers" 30 years later, says that Statman was
the best student he has ever had. "The kid just
gobbled up everything," says Grisman, a Grammy-nominated
bluegrass-folkjazz musician. "I always tell people
that if the only thing I ever did was give Andy
his first mandolin lesson, it would have been a
life well spent."
Statman's
virtuosity and passion led the teenager into a
progressive bluegrass band and into the company,
as a session man, of folk superheroes like Bob
Dylan and
other celebrated performers, such as folkie David
Bromberg and
bluegrass fiddler Vassar
Clements.
Andy
Statman, Bela Fleck
"I'm
very lucky," says Statrnan. "The guys I've studied
with have treated me as an apprentice in the Old
World sense. I'm probably from the last generation
that had a chance to learn from the greats."
In
fact, his next significant mentorship after Grisman,
with little-known jazz-saxophone virtuoso Richard
Grando,
turned out to be life-changing. After feeling a
tug away from bluegrass during his late teens,
Statman, stirred at the time by John
Coltrane's
experimental jazz, found himself compelled to master
the saxophone.
But
his first lesson, as he tells it, was in fact a
discussion, one about whether or not God exists.
Grando was something of a renaissance man, as interested
in spirituality, anthropology and psychology as
he was in music. Statman's sponge-like qualities
did not stop at his ears; he started soaking up
Native American mysticism, the I Ching, and Jung's
theories on synchronicity and the "miracles in
coincidence." Musically, Statman relates, he was
at the time attracted to all things ethnic —Balkan,
Native American, Japanese, Latin and African root
music, and at one point even recorded with the
likes of Jerry
Garcia.
In the spirit of Jung, it was a kind of quest for
what the collective unconscious might sound like.
That's
when lightning struck: "I realized that I was born
a Jew," says Statman, "and that it wasn't by accident.
I needed to find my own spirituality in my music
and in my life my own roots, not someone else's."
Statman’s
hunt for his heritage progressed slowly, met by small,
incremental changes in his everyday practice— laying
of tefillin and a prayer service here, a traditional
Sabbath there. And there were those prayers again,
those nigunim from his childhood.
So,
true to character, the young apprentice, now in
his early 20s, went off to seek another master.
The mentor he found was no less than klezmer clarinetist Dave
Tarras, "the
most successful immigrant-era Yiddish musician," in
the words of music writer Seth
Rogovoy.
While
Statman the musician was blowing into the instrument,
Statman the Jew was inhaling his history, rejoicing
in the sound and the feel of his self-discovery as
a person with a rich ancestral past. He felt revived—as
did Tarras, who was rediscovered and recorded once
again. Tarras (who died in 1989) later bequeathed
his clarinets to his greatest protégé,
and made him the next link in the chain.
And
so Statman became known primarily as one of the key
klezmer revivalists of the 70s and early 80s, the
musicians who launched a great wave to reclaim the
music of the Old World that had been fumigated away
50 years before at Ellis Island.
To
Statman, the alt-neu klezmer
music was about much more than reclaiming cultural
roots. It was about ecstatic devotion, recreating
the transcendent prayer of the founder of hasidism,
the Ba'al Shem Tov —prayer he was engaging
in more and more regularly as he grew closer to
Orthodox life. Grisman, who is himself Jewish,
notes that "it was the music that led Andy into
observance. And then he got deeper into the music
by going deeper into its source."
In
fact, Statman says that he began to see klezmer as
a living form of music mostly in the context of a
religious life. But the irony here is rich: Once
he became religious—today he lives as a conspicuously
devout (white shirt, black pants and velvet yarmulke) "fusion" hasid —he
didn't feel the need to play the music anymore. By
the time his roots were both deeply planted and fully
exposed, Statman felt pulled back toward jazz and
the ways that it offers to indulge in contemplative,
wandering, deep-space spirituality.
Jim
Whitney, Andy Statman and Itzhak Perlman
Since
its divergence from mainstream klezmer in the mid-90s,
Statman's journey has taken him, once again, to
new places he's somehow been before. He's recorded
a number of traditional Jewish-inspired albums,
including "Songs
of Our Fathers" (which
sold over 60,000 copies without advertising) with
Grisman, who says that the emotional Jewish connection
he feels with Statman ("my rabbi") is as strong
as the bond he feels with him musically, and the
classical klezmer sensation "In
the Fiddler's House," with Itzhak
Perlman,
in 1996. He's also done some more bluegrass inspired
work—like "Andy's
Ramble" in ‘94,
a klezmer-overlaid progression over his previous
mandolin work.
Larry
Eagle, Jim Whitney and Andy Statman
It's
a journey Statman says he now revisits with his
trio when they perform: "We're creating an experience
between the audience and us," Statman now performs
his distinctive, unconstrained meditations on jazz,
klezmer, bluegrass and the human soul with bassist Jim
Whitney and
percussionist Larry
Eagle,
frequently at the Charles Street Shul, in the West
Village. "At a certain point, we're just talking,
just having a three-way conversation."
This "conversation" changes
each time they have it on stage, no melody sounding
quite the same as it did before, and none bearing
the definitive stamp of the genre that spawned it.
A totally unselfconscious performer, Statman does
not mind that many audiences leave slightly befuddled
as to what kind of music, exactly, they have just
heard.
It
is unabashedly American music, Statman would tell
them, proud of his U.S. roots, and the spirit of
individuality, creativity and compassion that country
embodies. And it's jazz, he'd say, on its lonely
search for the spirit of lost worlds. Or it's deeply
religious hasidic prayer, he'd explain in his kind,
soft voice, intended to embrace my brothers and bring
them back into the fold. It's deeply Jewish because
I am, and it's honest, because I am. It's all of
those things, because, although they may seem worlds
apart to you, "they all come together in me."
"If
you're in touch with your Judaism," Statman is saying,
his voice cracking, "you experience things..." He
is misty by now, and it is clear that this is a man
who still and always speaks, and plays - whatever
it is he's playing—from the very roots of his
soul.
