Search Results

This epilogue draws the reader into the ethnographic present: the performance of Jewish music in a postmodern world. Starting with a concert performance of the New Budapest Orpheum Society, for which the author is the Artistic Director, the chapter asks questions about the possibility of revival after the end of Jewish music history. Jewish music, in popular and art genres, may thrive in revival in the twenty-first century, but as phenomena such as the popularity of klezmer in the nations that perpetrated the Holocaust signal a return to history or a release from history. The processes of cultural negotiation and historicism provide contexts for Jewish music in a postmodern world no less than in modernity.

This chapter offers an obituary for Leopold Kozłowski. It describes Leopold as the last klezmer, who died at the venerable age of 100 on 12 March. It recalls how Leopold spent several months in the labour camp at Kurowice, recounting how he taught a Nazi officer the accordion in exchange for food, and how the Nazis forced him to compose a “death tango” and play while other Jews were led to their deaths. It also mentions Leopold's survival from the labour camp and resettlement in Kraków, where he studied conducting at the Higher State Music School. The chapter notes Leopold's composition of music for films and the theatre, even acting in the film Schindler's List while serving as an adviser on the music of the ghetto. It highlights his performances in Poland, Europe, the United States, and Israel, which he continued until the end of his life.

This chapter introduces the reader to klezmer traditions in Kraków and Berlin, giving a historical overview of the roots and beginnings of the klezmer boom. It sketches the background of the rising interest in Jewish heritage and the Jewish past in Poland and Germany throughout the 1980s, which included the revitalization of Jewish quarters (particularly the Jewish district of Kazimierz in Kraków) and the initiation of Jewish culture festivals in both cities. The chapter also provides an introduction to the basic elements of klezmer style and the Jewish wedding ritual. Finally, considering the genre in its historical context, the section addresses the extent to which the klezmer revival in Poland and Germany draws on previously existing musical heritage and the degree to which it exemplifies an “invented tradition.”

This chapter expands on some of the points Frank London has made, in his overview of the revival, regarding the variety of motivations for “reviving” klezmer among performers and audiences. It offers the author's own understanding of why we're doing this to begin with. It looks at the phenomenon of the klezmer revival from a sociological point of view, in the context of some larger trends in American Jewish life that have been emerging over the past two decades. The author speaks not as a scholar presenting research but as one of the participants in the phenomenon and someone who has promoted a particular use of klezmer and a direction for its future. She concludes with her own personal klezmer manifesto.

This chapter focuses on the east European Jewish professional instrumentalist, the klezmer, and his music. The earliest known use of klezmer as a term for a musician occurs in a Jewish community document from Kraków dating from 1595. The chapter assesses the status of klezmer music throughout the region of eastern Galicia from roughly the 1870s until 1936. It presents a series of interviews with Yermye (Jeremiah) Hescheles, who had been the kapel-mayster (bandleader) of the klezmer ensemble of Gline (Gliniany). Besides confirming certain data known from other sources, Hescheles' descriptions and explanations offer a unique synthesis of the various kinds of information about Galician klezmorim and klezmer music unavailable elsewhere.

This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to suggest the full range and scope of modern klezmer studies by allowing a variety of voices to be heard. Most of the contributions to this volume began at the first Klezmer Research Conference, held at Wesleyan University in 1996. The intent is to clarify klezmer as a set of “roots and offshoots,” dividing the articles into two overlapping parts. The discussion then turns to the canon, history, and appeal of klezmer.

Within the repertoire of klezmer music in eastern Europe, the bulgarish was a regional phenomenon, originating in Bessarabia as the bulgărească, and then spreading as the klezmer bulgarish to parts of Eastern Ukraine. In America between 1881 and 1920, however, the bulgarish became increasingly identified as a major genre of klezmer dance music for Jews of various regional backgrounds. This chapter traces the development of a single klezmer dance genre, from the bulgărească of the Moldavian lăuteri (professional musicians), to the bulgarish of the Moldavian and Ukrainian klezmorim, and then to the bulgar of the klezmorim in the United States. It interprets the significance of this transformation, contrasting the situation in the Old World with the adaptation of this dance genre to suit the needs of the largely proletarianized Jewish immigrants in America during the first half of the twentieth century. In order to explain the significance of the bulgarish within American klezmer music, it introduces several points about the nature of klezmer professionalism and the composition of the klezmer repertoire.

This chapter takes a closer look at the role of the accordion in klezmer music. Like the pioneering Italian American virtuoso accordionists, Jewish musicians felt equally at home playing classical and folk music. The select analysis of early accordion playing styles and stylistic characteristics sheds light on the interaction and interplay of klezmer musicians with their surrounding worlds—Old and New. A distinctive feature of the early “klezmer sound” was the accordion's imitation of the human voice heard in liturgical, paraliturgical, and Yiddish song. By the late 1930s, the accordion was often used for chordal accompaniment (rather than as a solo instrument). It was an integral element of the popular Hasidic bands of the 1960s and the “klezmer ensembles” that embraced the new Israeli music as well as earlier “Palestinian” music. Although it was often deemed “an outsider,” for the revivalists of the 1980s and beyond, the accordion has been characteristic of the klezmer style.

Research on the the recent klezmer movement generally obscures the fact that the contemporary klezmer scene in Germany is dynamic and has evolved over a more than twenty-year period. It comprises participants from numerous backgrounds and generations, including Jews from the former Soviet Union, Israel, and the United States as well as both non-Jewish and Jewish Germans, from the former German Democratic Republic as well as West Germany. The chapter shows that the German market also had a strong influence on the development of klezmer internationally—particularly in the United States—as well as interesting inter-European and cross-continental collaborations that have developed in recent years. This chapter situates contemporary German klezmer within a broader framework by interviewing prominent klezmer musicians in the German scene. In so doing, this ethnography shows that, while issues related to the Holocaust and the building of a post-Cold War German identity are central themes, klezmer is inherently transnational—involving multiple nationalities and concerns beyond a simple coming to terms with the German past.

This chapter focuses on the careers of two major bands—The Klezmorim and Brave Old World—which emerged partly or wholly from the little-known California context of the 1970s. Drawing on interviews and song texts, it imagines how klezmer music evokes emotion and makes experiences of “Jewishness” reverberate with both fondness and a sense of loss.

Today there are dozens if not hundreds of bands playing Yiddish music. Klezmer is Jewish music; it has gone from an underused term to being overgeneralized. One of the best aspects of the klezmer scene is its intergenerationality. At weddings today, the music forms a new bond between the oldest and youngest members of the family. Klezmer concerts forge an unlikely alliance between seniors and punks in rock clubs and formal concert halls. It's not unusual for a contemporary klezmer recording to feature older Jewish musicians who have been performing this music for over fifty years alongside rock guitarists, Latin or African percussionists, and Gypsy accordionists.

This chapter illustrates some observations about author's experience during the past twenty-four years as one of the instigators of the music's revitalization and as a leader of academic klezmer and Yiddish music ensembles at the New England Conservatory of Music and several other colleges. In the last quarter of the twentieth century the Jewish wedding-music tradition known as klezmer reemerged in America and, later, internationally as a popular ethnic musical style and as a creative point of departure, especially for younger musicians. Until its revival in the late 1970s, klezmer music seemed an unlikely choice as a subject for academic inquiry, an orphan of a culture that affords its dance musicians a status only a small notch above that of beggars. For all of these reasons, klezmorim and their repertoire have been largely ignored by scholars of Jewish music, whose Weld has traditionally been confined to the study of more overtly religious musical traditions. This chapter later provides an overview of inventing a klezmer curriculum. Klezmer and Yiddish music became part of the official New England Conservatory curriculum in 1983, with the launching of a one-semester course entitled “Yiddish Music Performance Styles.”

This chapter observes the local manifestations of klezmer revival in Chmielnik, Lelów, and Szczekociny. It analyzes how the festivals and musical performances in the three cities contribute to an environment that encourages people to speak the unspoken. It also addresses the significance of a Jewish performance in a small Polish town that opens a cultural space for thinking in new ways about social identity and community. The chapter explains how a repertoire of particularly Jewish music influence the audience's perception of a town's past and future, as well as how festivals contribute to the social changes. It talks about small-town events with Jewish themes that focus on culture and draws on theatre, dance, film, and food, in addition to music.