A little music
for mom’s ears

By Diane Prokop
Times Staff Writer

Looking for a little Mom’s Day entertainment? Check out mother-and-daughter klezmer queens Elaine Hoffman Watts (on drums) and Susan Watts (trumpet and vocals) in concert on Sunday at World Café Live.
Klezmer, if you didn’t already know, is Eastern European Jewish folk music. It’s happy music traditionally played at Jewish celebrations like weddings or bar and bat mitzvahs.
Klezmer music is in the blood for both women — the third and fourth generations of klezmer musicians in their family.
Hoffman Watts’ father, Jacob, was a well-known and respected klezmer musician in the 1920s. Hoffman Watts was born in 1932 and began learning to play klezmer music on the drums when she was about 6.
"That’s the way the klezmer was handed down in the old country, from father to son," Hoffman Watts said, but in her case, the family music rooted in a town near Odessa in the former Soviet Union was passed from father to daughter.
He also influenced her choice of instrument.
"We lived in West Philadelphia and daddy used to teach me the drums. He used to take me to the basement, play the xylophone and show me the beats," said Hoffman Watts.
Though she didn’t learn to read music until she was 12, she was the first female percussionist to be accepted at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music. She graduated from the school in 1954.
It wasn’t easy for a girl drummer to get gigs back then.
"They didn’t want women, that’s the way it was," she said.
According to the drummer, it wasn’t until the 1970s that she started playing klezmer professionally. Her determination and love of the music paid off. Having played and taught music for more than 40 years, Hoffman Watts was honored in September by the National Endowment for the Arts with its National Heritage Fellowship, the highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
Susan Watts, 41, also is classically trained, having attended the St. Louis Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Susan Slaughter, principal trumpet player of the St. Louis Symphony.
For Sunday’s concert, which will feature the duo’s performance with the Fabulous Shpielkes, Watts has reworked some of Joseph Hoffman’s (her great-grandfather) hand-written scores taken from books he made in 1927 for each of his children.
"He wrote a B-flat book for the clarinet, an E-flat for the saxophone, a C-book for the violin. I don’t know whether he wrote it from memory or other charts," she said. "It’s basically a fake book for whatever you needed to play at a Jewish wedding. It was a weird labor of love, because they didn’t need it. They knew all of it. They knew all the tunes, but we don’t. We’re playing all sorts of Russian marches you normally wouldn’t hear, unique things that aren’t part of klezmer."
Those who attend the concert will be able to hear one of the tunes that Watts arranged into a song with lyrics, with her take on klezmer music and her mom playing the drums. The audience also will be able to enjoy music in the moment, and close their eyes and be transported to another time.
"It feels awesome on every level to kind of play music that my great-grandparents never thought would be played," she said. "It’s awesome to rock the world of young people, a nice way of giving back, making the circle with the music."
The Mother’s Day concert is presented by the Philadelphia Folklore Project and its members, with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Philadelphia Music Project (funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts), the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and the Pennsylvania Historical Museum. ••
To learn more about Hoffman Watts and listen to samples of their klezmer performances, check out www.phillyklezmer.com
Reporter Diane Prokop can be reached at 215-354-3036 or dprokop@phillynews.com

If you go...
The concert is at 6 p.m. Sunday, May 11, at World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St. Tickets are $20, available by phone, 215-222-1400; the box office on Walnut Street; or online at http://tickets.worldcafelive.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=2435 (Note: World Cafe charges a $5 processing fee for each ticket purchased with credit card. Save $4 in fees by purchasing with cash at the box office in advance of the show; such purchases incur a $1 fee.)