“The traditional, instrumental party music of Yiddish-speaking, Eastern European Jews” Seth Rogovoy

A Yiddish contraction of two Hebrew words, kley (vessel) and zemer (song) , the word klezmer originally meant the musician himself and has only more recently come to denote the genre.

Old-world klezmer

By the end of the nineteenth century, after five hundred years of migration towards Eastern Europe, some five and a half million Jews were living in an area known as the Pale of Settlement, where they were confined and strictly controlled by Tsarist Russia. Musicians known as klezmorim, organised into family bands called kapelyes, formed a hereditary musical caste who, with the exception of a few celebrities, made a precarious living from freelance gigs for Jews and non-Jews, but whose chief role was to provide the music – sometimes celebratory, sometimes reflective – for weddings.

With no recordings, and little notated music from this time, our information comes from the Yiddish literature of the period. This is how Sholem Aleichem describes the famous Stempenyu ‘He would grab his fiddle, give it a swipe with his bow – just one, no more – and already it would begin to speak. But how, do you think, it spoke? With real words, with a tongue, like a living person…Speaking, arguing, singing with a sob in the Jewish manner, with a shriek, with a cry from deep within the heart..’

Beyond the Pale

After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, anti-Jewish legislation, pogroms, war, revolution and the breakdown of the Russian Empire provoked a wave of immigration which brought this musical tradition to America - and into contact with a new set of influences, notably jazz. You can get a flavour of the Old World sounds of these early American bands from historical recordings like these:

Klezmer Music 1910-1942

Crackly recordings – even when reissued with new Cedar sound restoration – which fired the imaginations of the klezmer renaissance. Abe Schwartz, Yenkowitz and Goldberg, Harry Kandel, Dave Tarras, I J Hochman, Naftule Brandwine and more.

Klezmer Music – Ellstein’s Orch & Tarras

Master of Klezmer Music – Russian Sher Kandel Harry

King of the Klezmer Clarinet Brandwein Naftule

Klezmer Plus! Beckerman Sid & Howie Leess

Recent recordings including some experimental masterpieces:

Shvaygn = Toyt Klezmatics Heimatklange of the lower East-side

The Well Alberstein Chava and The Klezmatics

Klezmer and Hassidic music Skeaping Lucie & The Burning Bush

Der Rebe Elimelech Gregori Schechter Festival Band

Rise Up! Shteyt Oyf! The Klezmatics

Di Shikere Frank London

Hiphopkhasene Solomon & Socalled

Very special guest David Krakauer, featurnig Michael Alpert, Frank London, Smadj Remix and more