Sure, the Beatles set the tone by introducing the sitar to pop, but it was his own visit to India that cemented Moshe Denburg’s lifelong quest to explore the world’s cultures through music, whether through his ensemble Tzimmes or as founder and original artistic director of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra. The Inter-Cultural Orchestra or VICO builds on the musical traditions of other lands and cultures.
“It’s initiated by the composer,” says Moshe. “I’m a composer with a Jewish background. Another composer may have a Chinese background. The composer begins with his or her own root culture and integrates instruments and ideas from cultures other than their own,” he says.
The result is a mélange of sounds and styles which are both unique yet unfamiliar to the Western ear. Arabic, Turkish, and Persian music, for instance, have notes that aren’t on the piano. They are in-between notes, sometimes called quarter tones.
“These are forms that don’t give themselves so easily to harmony,” says Moshe, admitting the instrumentation may sound dissonant to a lover of Mozart or Beethoven.
“Let’s face it, people need time to get into something,” he says.
It’s a formidable challenge – introducing a new musical form to an audience reared in the classics – but not unsurmountable for the musician who defied both convention and his parent’s wishes.
The story begins in Montreal in 1949. Moshe’s father, Chayim, was a prominent Orthodox rabbi. His mother, Miriam, sang Yiddish folk songs. Music permeated the Denburg household.
“My early acquaintance with music is the music of the synagogue and the songs of the congregation, and the folk music that my mother would sing,” says Moshe. “Basically, Jewish music.”
But it was the ’60s and he was also listening to the Beatles, The Incredible String Band and others who were trying to incorporate non-Western musical elements into their sound. Moshe had been writing songs from the age of 10 and, at 14, he taught himself how to play the guitar.
“I was definitely attracted to the stuff the Beatles were doing. It helped my understanding of where music was going,” he says.
His father, however, had other ideas and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. He wanted Moshe to become a rabbi.
“Let’s face it, a lot of people who are not involved in music think that their children who get involved in it are going to be dirt poor. They happen to be right,” Moshe laughs, “but…”
At first, he followed his family’s dictates. Like his father and his older brother before him, Moshe attended Yeshiva University in New York city. Yeshiva offered a mix of academics and Jewish studies, but it was the music program that attracted him.
“That’s when I started to read and notate music. I started my actual training there.”
A year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem followed. And then a stint at the Academy of Music, also in Jerusalem. But he was never really interested in school as a pathway to success. He wanted to write and perform and, in 1977, released an album, Moshe Denburg Sings, consisting of 12 traditional Jewish prayers put to music. Honouring his culture and its liturgy sealed the deal. His family came on board; Dad actually paid for the album, and his parents became life-long supporters.
“From that point on, they realized music was my life. I wanted to study the music of the world and, eventually, if I had the opportunity, to create an inter-cultural orchestra.” Living in Israel and being exposed to Mediterranean music strengthened his resolve.
“You get it in your ears and in your brain. Here’s the thing, growing up with Jewish music, there is an inter-cultural element that’s already there because Jewish people have lived in all these different cultures. We always borrowed and contributed to the culture around us. That is a dynamic we’ve been part of for a very long time.”
Anxious to study in situ, he travelled to India and Japan absorbing their culture and studying with other musicians. When he returned to Canada in 1986, he moved to BC and formed Tzimmes (pronounced tsi-mes), an ensemble dedicated to preserving and promoting Jewish music. And it’s here that he started to mix it up. The lyrics were in Hebrew, but Moshe put them to up-tempo Middle Eastern music. Tzimmes is not klezmer, he says, but includes klezmer, Jewish music traditionally played at weddings.
“I’ve always carried both these things with me – the secular aspect and the liturgical aspect. The liturgical aspect is because I come from where I come from and that is my mother’s milk, so to speak. On the other hand, klezmer is not a liturgical tradition. It’s instrumental, it’s celebratory.”
And then, as luck would have it, a situation arose that ultimately led to Moshe realizing his lifelong dream.
“In 1999, some friends started the Sacred Music Festival. The couple that started it approached me to participate with Tzimmes, my Jewish music ensemble. I contributed, as did other people, and at the end of that first festival, they did a big jam. So, I said how would you like me to write something for everyone? We got a little money, and we got the musicians to agree to play for a little bit. There were 28 musicians and a choir of eight.”
“It was intended to be a proof-of-concept kind of thing,” he continues. “I didn’t yet know where I wanted it to go, but it was successful. For the next little while, we had a home at the Sacred Music Festival.”
Moshe incorporated the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra as a non-profit society in September 2001. As its founding member and first artistic director, he was saddled with responsibilities, not the least of which was the task of bringing musicians with different cultural backgrounds together, those that read music and those who played intuitively.
“We have to get away from this idea that ‘legitimate music’ is the one you learn how to read and write,” he says. “In India, for example, they understand music and they have a musical language, but they do not begin the music making process with what is written on the page. They study with their guru for years and years and perfect their technique, which involves a certain amount of improvisation. They understand music but it is aural. In fact, you could argue that if people are so tied to notes on a page, they lose feeling, they lose spontaneity.”
Another challenge, he says, was the balancing of the instruments. Western instruments are loud whereas Eastern instruments are quieter. Since Eastern ensembles were intended to fill a room and not a hall, the East did not construct big orchestras like they did in the West. So, when you have a violin and you’re playing it together with an oud, a Middle Eastern version of the flute, the Western musician has to play softly, and the Eastern musician has to play loudly. Plus, the softer sounds are amplified.
And yet another concern Moshe encountered early in the Orchestra’s evolution – the issue of cultural appropriation. He remembers being asked, as someone with Western sensibilities, about the validity of composing for the sitar.
“So, I said for me, I’m paying homage to their tradition. I am spending time trying to learn something. The problem, I think, is that [appropriation] comes up when there’s an economic advantage given to one group utilizing the cultural properties of another. But we don’t do that. We’re not there. The Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra has taken a collaborative approach. Everyone is respected because it assumes a mutual approach not a cross-cultural approach, not an ‘I’m crossing boundaries and I’m going to take this kind of approach.’ This is the respect we wish to foster, and we do it by concentrating on the art, not the politics. We leave the political afterthoughts of our musical resonances to others.”
Moshe says he was basically working by himself for the first five years, securing funding through grants and private donations, negotiating fees and overseeing promotion.
And always, at the back of his mind, “I was torn between trying to make this entity continue and what I really wanted to do – to be a composer and compose for [the Orchestra].”
Positive feedback encouraged him to stay the course.
“It so happened that there was a very good response from my fellow artists. There were good people, professionals, who thought highly of the project and wanted it to work, so that’s how it grew. It was a bit of a struggle,” he admits. “It was nip and tuck but now 20 years later it’s a going entity.”
Moshe relinquished his role as artistic director of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra in 2014. But he’s not languishing in semi-retirement. He lives in East Vancouver with his partner, Naomi, a respiratory therapist, and although the couple have no children of their own, Moshe’s nephew, Elisha Denburg, carries on the family tradition as an accomplished composer in his own right. Moshe continues to play with VICO – guitar and vocals are his specialties – and composes for other entities, particularly the Orchid Ensemble, another Vancouver-based multicultural group, this one with predominantly Asian roots. As for COVID, he was as busy as ever when the pandemic struck in 2020.
“I got this Taiwanese commission,” he says. “The perfectly socially distanced job.”
Social distancing also presented him with an opportunity to follow up on another desire, to complete a double album of his Tzimmes pieces.
“I went into the studio one-on-one with my engineer for overdubbing. In fact, at one point at the very beginning of the pandemic, we did mixing sessions by Zoom.”
In short, he’s enjoying a rich and rewarding life.
“A lot of things that people do is not a calling,” says Moshe. “They don’t feel ‘called.’ They don’t feel completely immersed when they go to a job. So, what happens? They leave the job and, unfortunately, two weeks later it’s bye-bye. Where do you shift to? As an artist, I can still do the things I want to do. There’s always something to do with a creative project.”
“It’s actually a feeling of completeness when I’m involved in music making,” he continues. “The stories that I tell are generally about states of mind and of feeling and of being in the world and they’re dressed up by the strong cultural strands that I’ve encountered and which I consider important to me.”
“One plan I have had for many years, in fact since I began dreaming about an inter-cultural orchestra in the early ’80s, was to compose a large-scale work, in multiple movements. Another plan I have is to complete a manual of inter-cultural orchestration for those who wish to acquaint themselves with the technical resources of non-Western instruments.”
For a man who believes music unites the world, Moshe could be disappointed in current tensions and regional flare-ups. Yet he’s not dismayed.
“I feel very positive. I know there are some really intractable problems in the world, but I think there are things that begin with the personal and are offered on the personal level. It comes from art; it comes from the collaboration of people who experience something of unity. People are listening to each other and trying to create something. That spirit, I think, is what’s winning out.”
And thus, the importance of institutions like Tzimmes, the Orchid Ensemble, and the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra.
“We can see ourselves in each other.”
To learn more about the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra, visit https://vi-co.org/
Snapshot
If you were to meet your 20-year-old self, what advice would you give him? “I’d say just work as hard as you can at the thing you love the most.”
Who or what has influenced you the most and why? “Indian music and the musicians and teachers I had were the most influential in my life because it came at a time when I was really trying to achieve something, and I learned enough from that tradition to really hone some of my abilities.”
What are you grateful for? “I’m grateful for certain teachers and certain connections I’ve made but I’d say at the root of my career is because of my parents who, at a relatively young age, in my twenties, started to support me in my calling.”
What does success mean to you? “It means to have the freedom to create something and put it out in the world. If one focuses on the process of creation and dissemination and one feels free to do so, then that is already success.”
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