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You can hear it in the hottest clubs in New York, the hippest rooms in New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco, and in top concert halls around the world. It's a joyous sound that echoes the past. It's Old World meets New World. It's secular and sacred. It's traditional and experimental. It's played by classical violinist Itzhak Perlman (his all-klezmer album in his all-time best-seller!), the hypno-pop band Yo La Tengo, and avant-gardist John Zorn. It made the late great Benny Goodman's clarinet wail. It's klezmer and it's hot!
The Essential Klezmer is the definitive introduction to a musical form in the midst of a renaissance. It documents the history of klezmer from its roots in the Jewish communities of medieval Eastern Europe to its current revival in Europe and America. It includes detailed information about the music's social, cultural, and political roots as well as vivid descriptions of the instruments, their unique sounds, and the players who've kept those sounds alive through the ages. Music journalist Seth Rogovoy skillfully conveys the emotional intensity and uplifting power of klezmer and the reasons for its ever widening popularity among Jews and Gentiles, Hasidim and club kids, grandparents and their grandkids.
A comprehensive discography presents the "Essential Klezmer Library," extensive lists of recordings, artists, and styles, as well as an up-to-the-minute resource of music retailers, festivals, workshops, and klezmer Web sites.
The Essential Klezmer is as entertaining as it is enlightening.
Seth Rogovoy is a pop-music critic and historian. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he hosts an all-klezmer radio program called Rockin' the Shtetl. Chapter 1
Old World Klezmer
The klezmer music we hear today, the music of the contemporary klezmer renaissance, derives its characteristic flavor and sound-indeed, its very soul-from the music played by nineteenth-century musicians of Eastern Europe. It is undoubtedly that haunting, Old World quality, combined with a fresh, contemporary outlook, to which listeners respond when hearing the music of violinist Alicia Svigals, clarinetist Margot Leverett, vocalist Lorin Sklamberg, or keyboardist Alan Bern. These university- and conservatory-trained musicians, raised on rock and roll and well versed in jazz and ethnic folk musics, have steeped themselves in the sounds of the Old World klezmorim. What comes out when they write and play is, therefore, an ecstatic fusion of old and new. Undoubtedly it is precisely that fusion that gives the music its added emotional depth, that accounts for its raw power to move the heart, the soul, and the feet, that induces an immediate sense of faraway recognition, even for those who are miles and generations and cultures apart from the shtetlekh of Galicia and Bukovina.
There is no single key that can unlock the secrets of klezmer or account for its ability to move a listener or to tug at heartstrings. But just as rock and roll fans mine the life and times of Elvis Presley in search of the singular moment when he combined country and R&B to create the ultimate popular fusion, or just as blues fans trace Robert Johnson to the fateful crossroads where he made his legendary deal with the devil, or as jazz buffs try to pin down just how Louis Armstrong developed the freedom to blow his improvised compositions, thereby inventing modern jazz as we know it, so, too, do we look to the Old World in search of, if something short of a singular key moment or musical invention, some sort of musical and cultural signposts to help illuminate the extraordinary mystery of klezmer's lasting appeal. At the very least, what we eventually learn is that today's klezmer is in many respects a retelling of the life and times of the Old World klezmorim.
With no recordings to access directly and very little in the way of musical notation to go by, much of what we know of Old World klezmer is contained in the pages of nineteent
The Essential Klezmer is the definitive introduction to a musical form in the midst of a renaissance. It documents the history of klezmer from its roots in the Jewish communities of medieval Eastern Europe to its current revival in Europe and America. It includes detailed information about the music's social, cultural, and political roots as well as vivid descriptions of the instruments, their unique sounds, and the players who've kept those sounds alive through the ages. Music journalist Seth Rogovoy skillfully conveys the emotional intensity and uplifting power of klezmer and the reasons for its ever widening popularity among Jews and Gentiles, Hasidim and club kids, grandparents and their grandkids.
A comprehensive discography presents the "Essential Klezmer Library," extensive lists of recordings, artists, and styles, as well as an up-to-the-minute resource of music retailers, festivals, workshops, and klezmer Web sites.
The Essential Klezmer is as entertaining as it is enlightening.
Seth Rogovoy is a pop-music critic and historian. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he hosts an all-klezmer radio program called Rockin' the Shtetl. Chapter 1
Old World Klezmer
The klezmer music we hear today, the music of the contemporary klezmer renaissance, derives its characteristic flavor and sound-indeed, its very soul-from the music played by nineteenth-century musicians of Eastern Europe. It is undoubtedly that haunting, Old World quality, combined with a fresh, contemporary outlook, to which listeners respond when hearing the music of violinist Alicia Svigals, clarinetist Margot Leverett, vocalist Lorin Sklamberg, or keyboardist Alan Bern. These university- and conservatory-trained musicians, raised on rock and roll and well versed in jazz and ethnic folk musics, have steeped themselves in the sounds of the Old World klezmorim. What comes out when they write and play is, therefore, an ecstatic fusion of old and new. Undoubtedly it is precisely that fusion that gives the music its added emotional depth, that accounts for its raw power to move the heart, the soul, and the feet, that induces an immediate sense of faraway recognition, even for those who are miles and generations and cultures apart from the shtetlekh of Galicia and Bukovina.
There is no single key that can unlock the secrets of klezmer or account for its ability to move a listener or to tug at heartstrings. But just as rock and roll fans mine the life and times of Elvis Presley in search of the singular moment when he combined country and R&B to create the ultimate popular fusion, or just as blues fans trace Robert Johnson to the fateful crossroads where he made his legendary deal with the devil, or as jazz buffs try to pin down just how Louis Armstrong developed the freedom to blow his improvised compositions, thereby inventing modern jazz as we know it, so, too, do we look to the Old World in search of, if something short of a singular key moment or musical invention, some sort of musical and cultural signposts to help illuminate the extraordinary mystery of klezmer's lasting appeal. At the very least, what we eventually learn is that today's klezmer is in many respects a retelling of the life and times of the Old World klezmorim.
With no recordings to access directly and very little in the way of musical notation to go by, much of what we know of Old World klezmer is contained in the pages of nineteent