Klezmer: I. Conquête de l'Est - Joann Sfar

I read and wrote a brief review of the first part of Joann Sfar's Klezmer in 2008 - a scarily long time ago now that I go back to look for it - when it was published in English translation by FirstSecond. I remember the thrill of seeing the artist's remarkable facility for colour and fluidity bringing a unique story to life. Despite French editions of the series being available, I somehow never got around to picking them up, hoping that FirstSecond would get around to translating subsequent volumes and presenting them in what I thought at the time were better quality editions. Well, it's taken 15 years but I've finally given up on the idea of seeing the subsequent volumes translated, and I've changed my mind about the presentation. Or at least, as far as reading the first two volumes of the series now. I've promised myself I will not take as long getting around to finish reading the series in the original French.

Klezmer, for those who don't know - and I'm no expert and can't say I'm familiar with any elements of it - is a form of Jewish folk-jazz music, and part of the Jewish East European storytelling tradition. Forgive me if there are some inaccuracies in my description. In some ways, Joann Sfar uses this music and his artistic expression of it in Klezmer as a way of getting in touch with his father’s Sephardic origins and exploring his own roots and tradition. That at least is evident in the references he uses quite remarkably and distinctively at least in the first two volumes of the five-part series.

Book 1, Conquête de l'Est opens with a group of travelling Klezmer musicians demobilised from the Polish army and on a tour of small villages being summarily wiped out by a rival Klezmer group. The leader of band, Noé Davidovitch, survives and upstages the local musicians at a Jewish wedding with his harmonica playing. He is acclaimed by rabbi and appointed as head of the group who killed his friends, to help them learn to find "le rythme tragique des choses" in their art. For Davidovich it's enough of a vengeance that the killer band of musicians will have to learn harmonica and live up to the musical legacy he has left behind. He leaves the village followed by a young woman Hava, who begs to join him, refusing to accept an arranged marriage, claiming that she can sing the old songs. Noé introduces himself as The Baron. 'Baron de mes fesses'. ('Baron of Backside' in the English translation).

In a parallel story, Yaacov, an otherwise exemplary student and prodigy, has been expelled from his yeshiva by the chief rabbi for stealing. He makes his way into the world, denouncing god and rescues/steals the surviving instruments from the burnt-out wagon of the dead musicians left behind by the Baron, and teaches himself to play banjo. Badly, it has to be said. However a chance meeting with a gypsy Tchokola and a sensitive Jewish violinist presents an opportunity to make some money for food by singing Jewish folk songs. Not a Jew himself, Tchokola observes that "Les juifs, ils sont toujours à se marier, à se circoncire, à se fiancee. Il y a du pognan à faire." The two separate travelling units of wandering musicians meet up in Odessa.

From a casual glance the artwork looks messy, but it really is quite extraordinary. Even looser than regular Joann Sfar style, the lines here are fluid and rarely even join, but are held together by the colour aquarelle washes (equally fluid and loose having little concern for keeping within lines) that create a mood and a sense of music. It gives the whole thing the look of quickly improvised sketches. Backgrounds are minimal, unless they have a purpose and yet every essential detail is there in every frame, angle and composition. It really is extraordinarily beautiful, with surprises and wonderful touches in every frame when you take time to consider how incredibly every sketched squiggly line delineates form and shadow, how the colour brings out the character and mood, the light and season. Klezmer can be read quickly, or you can linger over the detail and the layout of every page. Where I saw Chagall and Pasquin before, Sfar acknowledges much more traditional cartoonist influences like Sempé and Quentin Blake (which seems obvious now).

So what essentially is the purpose of Klezmer? It's a historical adventure, it's partly an attempt on the part of Sfar in his work to explore his family's Jewish heritage, but it's also an attempt to place his own personal and modern outlook on it and bring it together. As such, the author observes in his notes at the end of the book that none of his figures are actually religious, each of them find their own way to break away from that side of their past and find a way of accommodation with the non-Jewish world outside. It is still important to hold onto the heritage that has defined them to a large extent. Klezmer is the thread that holds them together, historic yet expressive and liberating.

Reading notes: Klezmer: 1. Conquête de l'Est was first published by Galliard in 2005. It's been reprinted several times, including most recently the whole series in a 2-volume collected edition. I read the original hardcover edition in a reprint. As noted above, FirstSecond published this first volume in English and never followed up with the other books in the series. The FirstSecond edition used very different paperstock from original French editions, glossy bright white instead of the matt off-white of the French edition. I loved the English language edition when I first read it in 2008, but there is a lot to be said for the loose artwork not looking so slick or like it is an art book, but more like a sketchbook.