Klezmer music is the instrumental folk music of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern and Central Europe, later transplated to the United States by immigrants. Klezmer is a compound word made from the Hebrew words kley (tools) and zmer (music), but the term was not commonly used to define the music and its musicians until the 19th century. The origins of this Ashkenazic instrumental folk music began in the 9th century in the Rhine Valley, just as the Yiddish language developed there. As the Jews slowly moved eastward, eventually settling in Eastern Europe in the 15th century, the characteristics of the music changed as well. But what never changed was the primary focus of the music: It was played for Jewish weddings and other joyous occasions. Its ecstatic, rollicking energy, sometimes mixed with slow and contemplative emotion, was the sound that became synonymous with the bittersweet existence of the shtetl Jews.
The advent of the Jewish philosophy, Khasidism (later called Hasidim), founded by Israel ben Eliezer (c.1700–c.1760) was a boon for the spread of klezmer music throughout Eastern Europe. They believed prayer filled with song (sometimes instrumental music and dancing) became the most essential way of reaching toward God with complete joyfulness. The Khasidim left an indelible mark in the klezmer world with their impassioned singing, playing and dancing. Their songs and dances helped make up the core dance repertoire, an much of the traditional klezmer music performed today is based on the music of the klezmorim (musicians) of Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine from the late 19th century to the eve of World War II.
Many of the Polish-Russian klezmorim who served in the Czarist army in the 19th century joined military bands. String players learned to play wind instruments and read and arrange music, and years of playing military music on brass and woodwind instruments changed the makeup of the klezmer bands in the late 19th century. The ensembles could be as large as 15 musicians using a combination of violin, cello, bass, clarinet, flute, piccolo, cornet, trumpet, trombone, alto, tuba, snare and bass drums, cymbals and woodblock. While the klezmorim in the Czarist army performed marches and waltzes, there were klezmorim in Romania whose repertoire was influenced by the Ottoman Empire. The Middle Eastern modes heard in Turkish and Greek folk music were already familiar from synagogue prayers, as well as the improvisational, melismatic singing and playing exhibited in many of the tunes. By the beginning of the 19th century the repository for all of this mixing, exchanging and borrowing of Greco-Turkish tunes was the region of Moldavia/Bessarabia, where it was infused with the repertoire of the Roma (Gypsy) musicians. Subsequently, traditional klezmer music performed today can be put under two broad genres of musical styles: Polish-Ukrainian and Romanian-Turkish.
To execute the playing of any klezmer tune or make an adopted melody (Ukrainian, Polish, Ruthenian, Romanian, etc.) more klezmerlike, the musician had to have the knowledge and ability to incorporate the dreydlekh, the Yiddish term used to describe all of the ornamentation he used in his playing. The klezmer's conservatory was the synagogue, his music the prayers and his teacher the cantor. Thus the root of klezmer music—what made it sound "Jewish"—was not to be found in the folk music of Central or Eastern Europe but in the meditative chants and prayer music of their Middle Eastern ancestors and neighbors.
We do not have the exact numbers of how many klezmorim were murdered during the Holocaust. But of the approximately 4,000 to 5,000 klezmorim who lived in Eastern Europe before World War II, approximately 90 percent of them perished. Luckily, there were a significant number of klezmorim who had immigrated to America and contributed to the rich klezmer and Yiddish popular-music scene that existed from 1890 to the late 1940s. However, after the Holocaust, a good portion of American Jewry now needed to identify not with a Yiddish culture, which was perceived as weak and victimized, but with a fresh vibrant Hebrew culture. When the State of Israel was established in 1948, Jews throughout the world were proud to be Jewish again. Consequently, there was little interest in klezmer music in the American Jewish community until the revival began in the mid-1970s. Since then klezmer has traveled back to its ancestral home and now is popular among Jews and gentiles throughout Europe. —Yale Strom
