Klezmer: Music, History & Memory

Book Talk & Round Table Discussion Co-sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society, YIVO, the Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center, and the An-sky Institute for Jewish Culture at the Center for Traditional Music and Dance Admission: Free

This talk and round table discussion with author Dr. Walter Zev Feldman (NYU Abu Dhabi) and James Loeffler (University of Virginia) celebrates the recent publication of the first comprehensive study of both the musical structure and the social history of klezmer.

Emerging in 16th century Prague, klezmer became a central cultural feature of the largest transnational Jewish community of modern times – the Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe. Much of the musical and choreographic history of Ashkenazim is embedded in klezmer repertoire, which functioned as a kind of non-verbal communal memory. The complex of speech, dance, and musical gesture is deeply rooted in Jewish expressive culture, and reached its highest development in Eastern Europe.

Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory reveals the artistic transformations of the liturgy of the Ashkenazic synagogue in klezmer wedding melodies, and presents the most extended study available in any language of the relationship of Jewish dance to the rich and varied klezmer music of Eastern Europe.

About the Author

Dr. Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music, and a performer on the klezmer dulcimer cimbal (tsimbl). During the mid-1970s, he and Andy Statman studied with the preeminent klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras and were two of the creators of the klezmer revival, with their groundbreaking LP Jewish Klezmer Music (1979). He is also an authority on Ashkenazic dance, giving workshops worldwide.

Feldman's book Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (Berlin 1996)—based on the theoretical writing and notations of the 18th century Ottoman Moldavian Prince Demetrius Cantemir has become a classic. Between 2011 and 2015 he conducted fieldwork in Moldova for a future monograph on the mixed klezmer and Gypsy instrumental tradition of that region.

He has recently co-authored the online Bibliography of East European Jewish Folk Music for Oxford, and is a board member of the Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae project at the University of Münster.