Ancient Israelite culture and music

Music is a ubiquitous means of expression and communication and an indelible part of nearly every ancient and modern culture. It transcends spoken language, ethnicity, and chronology. People craft musical sounds in multiple creative ways, including to match the sounds heard in nature. These organized sounds become features of a culture. Sometimes combined with words or other unique human sounds, music becomes a way of life, and people use music to mark cultural and life cycle events such as birth, death, illness, war, travel, and entertainment. Moreover, the objects used to create music come from nature. They are often organic materials such as various types of wood (e.g., bamboo, acacia), clay, and animal remains (e.g., bone, sinew, teeth), and at times nature itself may be the instrument – for example in stomping or beating on the ground, the slapping of bodies of water, and the manipulation of the air to make tones by twirling overhead instruments like prehistoric bullroarers.¹

Music sets the mood of an event or activity. For instance, in past cultures and some today, wailing women and men assist in the mourning process and in honoring the dead (Celtic, Africa), celebratory songs uplift soldiers returning from victorious battles, and mnemonic lyrics help to teach valuable school lessons to children, convey clandestine messages, and preserve family lineages and cultural history.

The geographical focus of this chapter is the land of Israel during the Iron Age (1200–586 BCE), a time identified by many as the biblical period. Ancient Israelites used music in many similar ways. Unfortunately the exact sounds and most intricate details regarding early Israelite music are lost and unrecoverable at this point. Ancient texts, however, in particular the Hebrew Bible and archaeological artifacts, give insight regarding performers, the types of instruments used, and possible performance contexts. Scholars continue to discover and research informative aspects of ancient Near Eastern cultures in general and the Israelites in particular. The relatively new field of archaeomusicology contributes to our understanding of the development and use of music in early societies. This chapter employs the discipline to explore the roles of music in Israelite culture, the primary characteristics of the music, the types of instruments used, and the questions of who served as musicians and where these musicians performed.

Types of instruments in early Israel

Ancient and modern instruments are typically classified using the Sachs-Hornbostel system of chordophone, aerophone, membranophone, and idiophone, which is also referred to as the CAMI system. The following is a brief description of each instrument classification, modern equivalents, and early Israelite examples.

General music of the Israelites via the Bible and archeology

The Hebrew Bible and archaeological artifacts paint a picture of an Israel in which people wove music into daily life, and because music was an integral part of the culture, everyone participated. The biblical writers describe inclusive musical activities in events such as Moses and the Israelites singing together following their daring escape from Egypt (Exodus 15:1); the celebration of a king once he is anointed (1 Kings 1:39–40; 2 Kings 9:13); and the sound of the shofar to praise an Israelite deity (Psalm 150:3). Music was a useful element that entertained, aided in teaching, and conveyed information.

Israelite musical performers

It is clear that music was essential in Israelite culture and a part of people's lives in numerous ways. Yuval is the first person the biblical writers mention who is connected specifically with musical instruments and musical performance, as well as with the etiology of music: “His brother's name was Yuval; he was the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and the pipe” (Genesis 4:21, New Revised Standard Version). The writers also describe cultural events involving music in which large groups of people or “all of Israel” participated (e.g., 1 Kings 1:40; 2 Samuel 6:5). Singing, chanting, clapping, blowing whistles, and shaking rattles are ways that were inclusive, but there were some individuals that had more specialized roles in musical performance.

Portrayals of the temple in Jerusalem present men working in several capacities (e.g., as priests, prophets, and gatekeepers), but in addition to these duties, some were musicians. The Chronicler explains that when David – who served as court musician for King Saul and was a popular psalmist – established a working system of assignments in the temple, he charged Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun to prophesy with cymbals (1 Chronicles 25:1). They were also leaders in the performance of temple music. A number of singers and musicians were under their direction (1 Chron. 25:6). Music in the temple was elaborate and the relationships between participants were intricate. Musicians played trumpets, cymbals, harps, and lyres. There were choirs. Everyone had a specific location, and activities were carefully choreographed and synched.

In most musical scenes in the Hebrew Bible, it is implied or accepted that men were the primary performers. Women were a major part of ancient Israelite musical performance, however, and archaeology and the biblical text offer valuable information regarding their involvement. One of the first instances concerns Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron. Following Moses’ singing with the Israelites (“Song of Moses,” Ex. 15:1–19), Miriam leads the women of Israel in celebration of their escape from oppression. Miriam begins singing and dancing with a frame drum, and “all the women” follow her (Ex. 15:20–1). It is interesting to note that the writers state that all of the women in this celebration had drums. Women with frame drums dancing and singing together to celebrate victories appear to have been a traditional part of Israelite culture. A similar event takes place when David returns home with Saul and the rest of the Israelite army following his famous encounter with and slaying of the infamous Philistine giant Goliath. Women with frame drums and other instruments gather to meet the young warrior and King Saul as they make their way home following war with the Philistines. As the women play their instruments they sing a song, slightly disparaging to Saul, about the heroic accomplishments of David and the King (1 Sam. 18:6–7).

These women were participants in what Eunice Poethig calls the Victory Song Tradition.² Women with instruments such as the frame drum serenaded victorious soldiers returning from battle. Jephthah's daughter also performs with drums and sings for her father as he returns home from a successful war. The victory song troupes and this type of performance appear to have been established cultural activities during this period in ancient Israel.

There are numerous female figurines dating to the time identified as the biblical period that display frame drums. For the most part, there are two styles of figurines: figurines in the round and plaque figurines. Figurines in the round are similar to small statues. Parts of them are made from molds and other parts are fashioned by hand. They typically stand on their own, and one can walk around them and view them from all sides. Plaque figurines are made from a mold and are usually leaned against a wall or some other object. Excavations at the coastal sites of Shikmona and Achzib have produced excellent examples of figurines in the round with frame drums and double pipes. Although the archaeological data and a host of figurines indicate that women played the frame drum primarily, men played this instrument as well. Plaque figurines with frame drums have been discovered at Tel Tanaach and Megiddo.

There are questions regarding the involvement of women and musical performance in the Israelite temple. For instance, the Chronicler states after listing the family members of Heman the seer:

This passage suggests that the daughters of Heman along with the men were involved in temple musical performance. There is also a psalmist's description: “Your solemn processions are seen, O god. The processions of my God, my King, into the sanctuary – the singers in front, the musicians last, between them girls playing frame drums” (Ps. 68:24–5).

Early Israelite culture and musical performance

Music and musical instruments were a part of important decisions and actions in Israelite culture. After the Israelites escape from Egypt, Moses is scheduled to speak with the deity of Israel on Mt. Sinai (Ex. 19:1–19). The deity and Moses converse in the midst of smoke that engulfs the mountain. While they are together, someone sounds a trumpet or shofar or ram's horn, often translated as “trumpet,” possibly indicating the god's presence. The writers describe a similar instance with two priests as trumpeters, Benaiah and Jahaziel. David instructs them to blow their trumpets continuously before the Ark of the Covenant, an act that may let the people know the deity was among them.

The Israelites used the trumpet as a signal to act, move, assemble, or disperse. In the destruction of Jericho, the Israelites have the task of taking the major city that is surrounded by a massive wall. Instead of brute force, the people march around the city seven times, and on the seventh they blow trumpets and shout. The wall falls flat, and they are able to take the city and destroy its inhabitants. The people listen the sound of the trumpet as an indicator of battle and act accordingly (Numbers 9:10). The prophet Jeremiah exemplifies this: “for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm for war” (Jeremiah 4:19).

Music was also a means to inquire and comprehend the will of the deity, particularly in prophesy. When King Jehoshaphat requests divine instruction from the deity by way of prophet Elisha, the prophet says, “get me a musician” (2 Kings 3:15). As the musician plays, he makes a connection with the deity to reveal the prophecy. The writers do not indicate what kind of instrument was involved, but the musician plays to aid the prophet. Note that in this instance, the prophet is an active participant, one who seeks the will of the deity, using music to achieve a certain elevated or enhanced state. According to the text, there may have been times when bystanders became passive participants in prophetic activity that involved music. This happens to King Saul. As he and Samuel are speaking, a band of musicians (lyre, harp, frame drum, cymbals, and pipe) are coming down from the high place. The prophets are in a prophetic frenzy from the deity. Samuel tells Saul that he will soon be caught up in the frenzy with them. As the musicians and prophets pass, Saul is pulled to their group, which causes people to ask, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” (1 Sam. 10:5–11).

The Israelites treated illnesses with the sounds of music. At the beginning of his downfall, Saul, Israel's first king, receives an evil spirit from the deity, which torments him with psychotic problems and causes him to act violently. His servants enlist the musical services of David the lyre player. The young musician temporarily relieves Saul's illness with his skillful lyre playing (1 Sam. 19:9).

Music was a part of birth and death in Israel. Specific songs sung at or during the birthing process are not in the text, but a child entering the world would have been welcomed and serenaded at some point by music. It is also clear that music was part of death. Wailing was a part of the grieving process, as specific individuals sang wails and laments for the deceased (Judges 11:40; 2 Chron. 35:25). It is not clear whether instruments other than the voice were used in singing laments, but both men and women sang them in Israelite culture (2 Chron. 35:25).

Ideas about the sound of music in Ancient Israel

The most perplexing enigma regarding music in early Israel is the question: What did the music sound like? An accurate answer to this query would be a priceless discovery, but finding such a thing is highly unlikely. First, there is no concrete reference point regarding how the music of antiquity sounded. Second, how will we know when or if we have achieved it? Unfortunately, there are a host of subtleties that are unrecoverable. This is one of the issues that comes with studying the past. Voices, some colors, tastes, smells, and sounds are essential but fragile parts of life that do not survive in the archaeological record and critical details about them cannot be found in ancient texts. While it is an asset to have artifacts and ancient texts, we have to remember that we were not the intended audience and writers were not writing for posterity. Thus, how these objects are used in the study of the past is crucial and will affect the questions we ask as well as the outcomes of the research.

When it comes to the sounds of the music of early Israel, we can say conclusively that musicians used many types of instruments. Employing our present knowledge, we can explore ideas regarding the sounds created through reconstructions, virtual instruments, and other means. Yet matters such as the different colors a player may have been able to produce on a lyre or harp with different strings or plectrums, or the sounds of instruments made from various woods, the timbres of drums with skins from different animals, and their thickness and other variable attributes, remain elusive. These types of subtleties make music come alive. It tells us about preferences and likes and dislikes within the culture. When we hear singers and musicians today in most genres, we can detect so much information from their voices and their color, depth, vibrato, and strength. These characteristics were present in antiquity, but sadly are now lost to us. Even with all of the technical information we can derive from the text and archaeology, we are limited in our attempts to reproduce such an organic artistry from the past.

Although these obstacles are indelible in the study of how early Israelite music may have sounded, a number of groups have offered unique ideas and interpretations in the ancient Near East in general and Israel in particular. Many of these are well-researched and excellent productions. One of the earliest works is the album entitled Sounds from Silence.³ Anne Kilmer and her team recorded information regarding Babylonian chordophone tunings and a musical interpretation of a Hurrian Cult song. Kilmer sang this hymn with lyre accompaniment. Their musical ideas came from translations of mathematical and musical tablets.

Among the literature on the subject of early Israelite music is The Music of the Bible Revealed, by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura, a world-renown organist and composer.⁴ Haïk-Vantoura presents the musical system called the te'amim, which allows one who understands the system to sing most of the Masoretic text (for further discussion, see Chapter 6 in this volume). She also completed recordings of the musical ideas she discusses. There are numerous questions and controversies regarding her work, as she was not a trained biblical scholar; however, she was a world-class musician who presents a thorough discussion of the system and very intriguing recordings of her ideas. Ancient texts and artifacts show the importance of music to the Israelites. This pervasive art form provides an insightful perspective about this enigmatic culture.

Introduction

The study of Jewish music is a challenging endeavor. One typically expects the liturgical music of a cultural group to be homogeneous and definable through melodic or rhythmic characteristics. But Jewish music is neither homogeneous nor definable. Due to the complex history of the Jewish people in the diaspora, Jewish music reflects a variety of contacts with local cultures throughout time. Therefore, the musical traits found in Jewish music are often characterized as adaptations of music from various local cultures, within a Jewish context. This is not to say that Jewish music is only made up of adapting music from other sources. Many genres, such as cantorial recitatives, Hasidic songs, klezmer repertories, Ladino songs, and piyyutim (the singing of religious poems), are unique to and centrally a part of Jewish culture. The fact that there is no universal feature to Jewish music does not diminish its value or importance. Rather, it is a reflection of the richness and development of Jewish musical culture. Jewish music needs to be considered within the context of the culture in which it is found, and situated within its place in history.

This chapter approaches the use of music in Jewish religious, liturgical, and paraliturgical situations (events for religious enrichment that are not mandated services). Both Ashkenazic and Sephardi/Mizrahi traditions are discussed in several geographic contexts.

Sources and challenges

The history of Jewish music is based upon a variety of sources: written, non-written, and oral. Each source provides a piece of a puzzle that creates an overall picture of Jewish music's past. The written sources include the Jewish textual tradition: Bible, midrash, Mishnah, Talmud, and responsa. These sources provide the primary basis from which to derive an understanding of the role of music during ancient, biblical, temple, and medieval Jewish life. Non-written sources include physical evidence of musical instruments found through archeological explorations. In addition, iconography (pictorial representations) from frescoes, mosaics, pottery decorations, and images on coins make up the many visual representations of music's use during the same early period of the written textual sources (ancient, biblical, and medieval times). Notated musical sources provide the most concrete record. Unfortunately, notation of Jewish music prior to 1700 is minimal, as only a few manuscripts are extant.¹ The oral tradition provides the richest source of melodic materials. Several regional traditions are represented in Abraham Zvi Idelsohn's monumental collection Thesaurus of Hebrew-Oriental Melodies, which was published in ten volumes between 1914 and 1932.² The regions represented in this collection include Yemen, Iraq, Persia, Syria, the “Jerusalem-Sephardic” tradition,³ Morocco, eastern Europe, and central Europe. This collection provided the basis for study throughout the twentieth century. Present-day recordings of scholars and private collections from individuals and institutions have added a vast dimension available for examination.

Some scholars have tried to uncover the sound of Jewish music from antiquity. However, any attempt to connect modern practice with historic sources is wrought with dilemmas. For example, although rabbinic sources dating back two thousand years refer to the practice of the melodic recitation of the Bible, we still do not know the sound of that recitation. Some scholars imagine that Jews from Yemen have faithfully practiced their tradition of cantillation throughout this two-thousand-year period and insist that Yemenite biblical recitation in the twentieth century is an exact replication of the past.⁴ Such claims are without merit. They are based on conjecture and are not provable.

An ongoing question that needs to be addressed involves the usefulness of contemporary oral traditions to understanding music of the past.⁵ To what extent do present Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions represent the continuation of oral traditions rooted in the past or the establishment of new practices? Each situation must be considered on its own merits. Today, ethnomusicology, the academic discipline that seeks to explore music and culture, stresses the in-depth understanding and unraveling of the complexities of a single tradition rather than trying to postulate broad, and often unprovable, theories about the universal nature of music in various cultures or across time. Documentation of an oral tradition should be placed in perspective and any attempts to project the antiquity of an oral musical tradition should be carefully considered.

History

Three musical types in the reading of sacred texts

Cantillation, psalmody, and liturgical chant are liturgical musical practices formed in the medieval period. Cantillation refers to the melodic recitation of biblical texts during the service. Psalmody refers to the practice of reciting psalm texts within the liturgy that could include a single text or a grouping of multiple texts. Liturgical chant encompasses a broad range of melodic styles set to the non-biblical portions of the liturgy. The melodic styles mentioned here include rhythmic and non-rhythmic melodies. Later generations built upon these three types in culturally specific musical styles.

II Nusaḥ

Psalmody is the practice of melodically rendering psalm texts mostly used within the introductory part of the liturgy. The melodies are known as pesuke dezimrah in Ashkenazic liturgy and zemirot in Sephardic liturgy for the Sabbath morning service. Typically, psalm chanting consists of an introductory phrase, a medial recitation note, and a final phrase. The use of psalms in Christian liturgy led many scholars to believe that the early music of the church based itself on Jewish models.¹⁴ Eric Werner expounded upon this topic in his seminal work The Sacred Bridge.¹⁵ Werner's conclusions have been the subject of greater scrutiny by chant scholars who see his work as speculative.¹⁶ Several attempts have been made to note the similarities of Jewish and Christian traditions without specific focus on the uncertain origins of these practices, due to the lack of sufficient evidence.¹⁷

The mainstay of Ashkenazic liturgy is made up of the Jewish prayer modes, referred to as nusaḥ.¹⁸ The prayer modes operate like other musical modes, which are defined by two parameters: scalar definition and a stock of melodies variously applied. The number of modes used in the Jewish tradition is a matter of scholarly debate.¹⁹ The generally accepted practice today that is a part of the pedagogy in American cantorial schools is the adoption of three prayer modes, named HaShem Malakh (The Lord Reigns), Magen Avot (Shield of Our Fathers), and Ahavah Rabbah (Great Love).²⁰ The name of each prayer mode is taken from the opening words of the liturgical passage that marks one of the first usages of that particular mode in the Sabbath liturgy. Hence, music and text are closely associated.

The HaShem Malakh mode is similar intervallically to the Western major scale, but with a lowered seventh scale degree (Example 6.1). In most instances the four lowest notes (or tetrachord) of a melody's scale pattern determine a Jewish prayer mode. As the ḥazzan continues reciting Kabbalat Shabbat, the HaShem Malakh prayer mode is developed. An additional feature of the musical modes is an affective association, and grandeur and God's strength are connotations of the HaShem Malakh.

Example 6.1 HaShem Malakh mode.

Magen Avot has intervallic similarity to the Western minor scale (Example 6.2). Recited towards the end of the Friday evening Sabbath prayer, the text of Magen Avot refers to the forefathers guarding the Sabbath. The mode is also heard in cantor's prayers on the Sabbath morning service, in the setting of the text Shokhen Ad Maron (He Who Dwells Forever). The typical ending of this mode emphasizes the fourth and final notes of the mode (F to C). Magen Avot is known as the didactic mode because it is used for extended declamations of text and does not make use of melodic elaboration.

Example 6.2 Magen Avot mode.

Ahavah Rabbah has often been called the most “Jewish” of the Jewish Prayer modes, because of its distinctive sound. The essential feature is the augmented second interval between the second and third notes of the mode (Example 6.3). There is no Western equivalent to this mode. The broad augmented second is produced by the lowering of the second scale degree (here, from D, as it appears in HaShem Malakh and Magen Avot, to Db) while the third scale degree remains in place (here, on E). Expressive liturgical texts use this mode. The common example is heard on the Shabbat morning in the setting of the text Tsur Yisrael (Rock of Israel) that precedes the Amidah. Ahavah Rabbah means “great love,” aptly reflecting the affective association of this mode, which musically expresses the “great love” for God through a unique musical sound.

Example 6.3 Ahavah Rabbah mode.

In other sections of the cantor's recitation of prayers, all three Jewish prayer modes are used. The differing quality of each mode expresses the unique subtleties of the text. This modal modulation helps to heighten the meaning of the text through emotional expression associated with the use of the nusaḥ. The three modes are used to express the text of the Sabbath morning Kedushah, recited during the ḥazzan's repetition of the Amidah, making it an important liturgical highlight. Ashkenazic liturgical music without harmony, performed by solo voice, demonstrates how the Jewish prayer modes aptly express the meaning of the text and provide a symbolic commentary. Ḥazzanut (the cantorial repertoire) is filled with intricate details combining textual and musical meaning.

Ashkenazic tradition

Music in Sephardic liturgy

Due to the diversity of Sephardic liturgical music, its study presents significant difficulties. The problem is compounded when one considers that the Sephardic practices are still maintained orally and only a limited amount of the repertoire has been notated and collected. In addition, Sephardic liturgical music has not received the same amount of study as Ashkenazic liturgical music and, hence, the research to draw upon is limited.

One other point deserves discussion. The term “Sephardic” has been variously understood in Judaic studies. The word Sepharad appears in the Bible in Obadiah 1:20 and is thought to refer to the Iberian Peninsula. The term “Sephardic” refers to Spanish Jews and their descendants in various points of relocation. Use of the term becomes problematic when these descendants relocated to other existing communities. In some cases the Spanish Jewish traditions replaced existing practices, while over time these immigrant Jews intermixed with the local Jewish culture. Through the remainder of this entry the term “Sephardic” may be better understood to refer to non-Ashkenazic Jews, as Sephardic Jewry has never been a single community that has remained unchanged over time.

The role of new music in modern synagogue life

The music of the American synagogue has undergone distinct changes in the last century. The present musical traditions of the synagogue can be seen as both a continuation of their European legacy and a reaction to influences from America culture. Although the seventeenth-century settlers in America were Sephardic, their influence was overshadowed by the European immigration of the nineteenth century. German Jews were the first to arrive after 1820. It was the mass migration of eastern European Jews in 1880 that led them to dominate American Judaism at the turn of the century. The predominant liturgical music during this immigrant period was known as the Golden Age of the Cantorate, which lasted from 1880 until around 1930, when it began to wane. Most of the cantors associated with the Golden Age were born and trained in eastern Europe and then came to America around the turn of the century through the 1930s. Some had regular pulpits for the entire year and others were only engaged for the High Holidays, when they commanded large salaries. Radio broadcasts, in addition to 78-rpm recordings and live concerts, proliferated this musical liturgical artistry. The discs provide a lasting record, freezing the sound of the Golden Age of the Cantorate for future generations. Great cantors of this period include Yossele Rosenblatt (1882–1933), Leib Glantz (1898–1964), Mordecai Hershman (1888–1940), Leibele Waldman (1907–69), Pierre Pinchik (1900–71), and Moshe Koussevitzky (1899–1966) and his brother David (1891–1985). So admired were these cantors that people came from long distances to hear them sing at concerts and services. The Golden Age of the Cantorate was a brief but significant period in the history of Jewish liturgical music that uniquely fused vocal artistry and impassioned prayer in a distinctive style that has become the definitive form of ḥazzanut.

As described above, the Reform movement that began in central Europe, and the music of Sulzer and Lewandowski, came to America and spread throughout the country. In the second quarter of the twentieth century, American composers sought to innovate the music of the synagogue according to contemporary styles. Musicians such as Binder, Freed, and Lazar Weiner (1897–1982) arranged traditional European melodies in accordance with the Jewish prayer modes, producing harmonies not typically found in Western music. Towards the middle of the twentieth century, two composers, Max Helfman (1901–63) and Max Janowski (1912–91), wrote compositions that have become standards for the High Holidays, Helfman's Sh'ma Koleinu (Hear Our Voice, Lord) and Janowski's Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King). During the second half of the twentieth century musical tastes have preferred more accessible music. In this context, Michael Isaacson adapts a variety of musical styles, both classical and contemporary, for his synagogue compositions. He and others also borrow from folk, popular, and Israeli-style songs. Cantors in Reform synagogues today draw from these diverse musical compositions encompassing the last 150 years, to provide interest and variety to their congregations.

The three denominations of American Judaism, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox, deal with similar concerns with respect to new music in the synagogue. At issue are congregational involvement and the role of the cantor as prayer facilitator. The history of the rhythmically precise central European and the rhythmically free eastern European traditions have been combined in varying practices in American congregations. Where Reform synagogues were once the source of artistic innovation, the trend has diminished in favor of participatory services. Trained cantors and some congregants seek to draw from the rich musical history of the Jewish tradition. Other congregants desire a more accessible musical service that facilitates their participation in an idiom they prefer. Music within this sphere may draw from the Jewish tradition, including the use of Hasidic and Israeli melodies, but folk and popular styles are predominant. The songs of Debbie Friedman (1951–2011), whose popularity increased in the 1980s and 1990s, amply represent this trend.

The dynamics of the use of music in Conservative synagogues is similar. Traditional melodies may be more commonly heard in Conservative synagogues, but these melodies are less than one hundred years old. Abraham Goldfarb (1879–1956) arrived in the United States in 1893 from Poland and studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He produced many books and pamphlets of synagogue melodies that are regularly sung today in synagogues and at home rituals. The Havurah movement, begun in the 1970s, sought to empower laity to participate in services and further their education. The result has been an increase in congregational involvement throughout a service. The cantor often functions as an educator and facilitator of congregational participation. But, particularly on the High Holidays and for special events, the rich legacy of liturgical music can be heard combining the artistry of cantorial recitatives, taken from or inspired by the Golden Age of the Cantorate, in compositions based on the traditional use of prayer modes and liturgical chants. Volunteer and professional choirs are also used.

Within Orthodox synagogues music serves a more functional purpose. A paid professional cantor is rare in these synagogues, whereas it is much more common in Reform and Conservative synagogues. The prayer leader in an Orthodox synagogue assumes the role of baal tefilah, and vocal embellishments are kept to a minimum. Congregational involvement is interspersed throughout the service. Like in the other movements, traditional melodies are more commonly heard on the high holidays. In many Orthodox synagogues, a ḥazzan may only be employed during the holidays and on the other days of the year a congregant serves in this role. Orthodox congregations also differ in their incorporation of nusaḥ. Some prefer the use of Israeli melodies or tunes from songs popular in the community for the highlighted portions of the prayer such as the Kedushah in the Sabbath morning service.

While some are critical of the lack of artistry in the continual influence of popular genres on liturgical music, others embrace it as a way of encouraging synagogue attendance. The popular trends and changes reflect the influences and gradual adaptation of contemporary American cultural surroundings. The process of adapting musical influences has long been a part of Jewish synagogue music's history.

Prior to the formation of cantorial training programs after World War II, individuals learned ḥazzanut through apprenticeship and life experience, and many sang in synagogue choirs during their youth. The first program to be developed was the Reform movement's School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion New York Campus, founded in 1948. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, affiliated with the Conservative movement, opened its Cantors Institute in 1952. The Cantorial Training Institute at Yeshiva University began training cantors to serve Orthodox synagogues in 1964.

Other examples include a wide variety of folk and art contexts. Religious and secular summer camps and programs throughout the year make use of a wide variety of music to educate children and teenagers in Jewish concepts and religious practices. For nearly sixty years new religious music has been composed in Israel. The range of music includes children's songs, popular music, and folk songs associated with Zionist themes. Folk singer Naomi Shemer captivated the feeling of solidarity in the country and the enduring importance of Israel as the home of the Jewish people with her songs “Al kol eleh” (All These Things) and “Yerushalayim shel zahav” (Jerusalem of Gold). The synthesis of traditional Jewish musical styles and forms in both sacred and secular contexts, combined with a contemporary classical idiom, has been the goal of several noted composers in Israel (see Chapter 15). The most significant figure was Paul Ben-Haim (1897–1984) who drew from a wide variety of Jewish and non-Jewish musical styles. Many have debated the “Jewish” elements in Israeli music, raising the question whether Israeli music is a national or Jewish musical form. The same debate is cast in regards to American Jewish composers of note such as Leonard Bernstein (1918–90), whose “Jeremiah” (1942) and “Kaddish” (1963) Symphonies make use of Jewish themes but also seek acceptance as works of mainstream Western art music.

Many art music composers and popular songwriters seek the goal today that has long been a part of Jewish music history: to compose music that draws from the Jewish tradition and that respects the past and inspires one in the present to perpetuate Judaism.

Introduction

In trying to understand how the Sephardic musical repertoire was performed in the past, we must take into consideration the relationship of each song to two important defining parameters: genre and social function. This question arises in the study of the repertoire in the two main areas of the Sephardic diaspora, namely, the Eastern Mediterranean (the Ottoman area, later Turkey and the Balkan countries, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Greece) and the Western Mediterranean (Northern Morocco), as well as in Israel and the many places to which Sephardim later dispersed, and where the Judeo-Spanish musico-poetic repertoire has been maintained until the present day. The subject of the performance practices associated with Sephardic music involves both the traditional ways the repertoire was once performed, and the ongoing styles and techniques of its performance today.¹

This chapter explores the songs that are either secular (non-religious in content) or paraliturgical (related to religious matters but with texts that are not in Hebrew but in Judeo-Spanish). The repertoire is predominantly vocal, sung in the Judeo-Spanish language, which is a Spanish dialect based on the language that the Jews spoke in Medieval Spain, where they had lived for many centuries before their final expulsion in 1492. The Judeo-Spanish language developed as its speakers borrowed from Hebrew and from the languages of their new surroundings. It flourished in two parallel dialects, one called “Judezmo” or “Ladino” in the Eastern area (with additions from Turkish, Greek, and Slavic languages), and the other called “Haketia” (with additions from Berber, Arabic, and Moroccan Arabic dialect) in the Western area.

In this chapter, we will consider the following questions in regard to the performance of Sephardic songs: What is the genre of the song? Who sings it, men or women? Where is it sung? When is it sung? And how is it sung, as a solo or in group singing, and with or without instrumental accompaniment? We will consider the function of examples from each genre in the lives of the individual and of the community, and as part of the repertoires of songs for the year cycle and for the life cycle.

Traditional performance

Modes of performance, as well as characteristics of text and music, differ in the cases of each of the Sephardic traditional genres, the romance, copla, and cantiga, collections of which are known as the romancero, coplas, and cancionero. These genres vary in: 1) their rendering, whether by solo or group; 2) the presence or absence of instrumental accompaniment; and 3) their gender definition, that is, whether they belong to the male or the female repertoire.²

I Romancero

The term “Romancero” means a collection or corpus of romances, which are narrative poems with a well-defined textual and musical structure.³ Their texts typically relate to the Spanish Middle Ages, involving kings, queens, princesses and galant knights, prisoners, and faithful (or unfaithful) wives. Other romances’ texts involve classical, historical, and even biblical themes.

Several old romances reflecting historical events have been forgotten in Spain but preserved in the oral tradition of the Sephardic Jews. One such romance relates the struggle between the children of King Fernando I of Castile and León (1016/18–65), Sancho, Alfonso, and Urraca: Sancho II from Castile puts his brother Alfonso (King of León) in prison, and his sister Urraca (of Zamora) intervenes to achieve Alfonso's freedom (Song 1).⁴

Song 1: Fernando in France + Sancho and Urraca. Elvira Alfasi, et al. (Larache, Morocco).

Rey Fernando, rey Fernando  de Toledo y Aragón,

y al pasar con los franceses  dentro de la Francia entró.

Halló la Francia revuelta,  no hubo quien la apaciguó;

metió a su hermano en la carcel  y a su hermano cautivó.

Y, después de cautivado,  mandó a soltar un pregón:

todo el que por él rogare  mérito no le quedó,

sea monja o sea fraile,  le quito su religión [volunta].

Doña Inacia, doña Inacia,  doña Inacia, antes que el sol,

quitó las ropas de siempre,  las de la Pascua pusó,

con ciento de sus doncellas  dentro de la corte entró.⁵

Romances are rendered as solo songs, with no instrumental accompaniment, and it is predominantly women who perform the repertoire and are responsible for its transmission. The music of the romances often has an ornamented melody and uses Eastern modes (the Arabic and Turkish makamat) that include microtonal intervals (narrower than the half-step) not found in the Western diatonic scale.

The next example, from Saloniki, Greece, has a melody in a free rhythm (without repeating accent patterns) built on a makam called Husseyni (with a lowered second degree), and features melismas (series of different pitches sung to a single syllable) at the end of each musical phrase (Song 2; Example 7.1). The romance tells the story of a fidelity test. A husband returns after many years away at war and asks a woman washing at a well for a cup of water; he asks why she is crying, and she explains that her husband has not returned from battle. She gives him her husband's description, after which he declares that her husband has died and told him to marry her. When she refuses, he reveals that he is her long-lost husband.⁶

Song 2: The Husband's Return. Renée Bivas (Saloniki, Greece).

Lavaba la blanca niña,  lavaba y espandía,

con lágrimas la lavaba  y con suspiros la ’spandía.

Por ahí pasó un caballero,  ’n copo d'agua le demandó,

de lágrimas de sus ojos  siete cantaricas le hinchó

– ¿Por qué lloras, blanca niña?  mi siñora, ¿por qué lloras?

– Todos vienen de la guerra,  al qu'aspero non hay tornar.

– Dáme siñal, mi siñora,  siñal del vuestro balabay.

– Alto, alto como'l pino,  derecho como es la flecha,

su barbica roya tiene,  empezándol’ a despuntar.⁷

Example 7.1 “The Husband's Return.”

The Romancero belongs to the women's repertoire, and its most common function is that of a lullaby, except in the case of a few romances that are included in the wedding repertoire, sung by groups and accompanied by percussion instruments. The previous example was a romance sung on the occasion of the preparations for the new couple, when the wool for the pillows and mattresses was washed by members of the community. The following song is also from the wedding repertoire, and its text relates the story of a married woman wooed by a young man who sends her love letters and presents, but she sends all of them back and remains true to her husband (Song 3). This narrative seems appropriate as advice for a bride. (Because the whole group sang it, men knew this song as well as women, as is evident from the name of the singer of this romance.) The romance closes by quoting a liturgical text with verses in Hebrew and their translation into Spanish.

Song 3: Rahel lastimosa. Moises Abitbul (Tetuán, Morocco).

Esta Rahel lastimosa,  lástimas que Dios la dio,

siendo mujer de quien era,  mujer de un gobernador.

Un dia salió al paseo  con sus damas de valor,

se encontró con un mancebo  que la trataba de amor:

la mandara muchas joyas,  alhajas de gran valor,

la mandara un anillo,  solo una ciudad valió.

Y todo se lo volvía  porque casada era yo.

Hodu l'Adonai ki tov,  ki leolam hasdo,

alabado sea su nombre  su merced nunca falto,

y en los cielos y en la tierra  mucho bien siempre nos dio.⁸

An interesting trait of the performance of the previous two examples is that they are sung in a special manner referred to as “concatenation.” To demonstrate this technique clearly we can consider two musical strophes of the Saloniki romance, “Lavaba la blanca niña,” in which the second half of the text in one strophe is repeated at the beginning of the next. (Thus, the music is structured in four phrases, repeated, as usual: abcd, abcd…; but the text, with its repetitions, follows the scheme 1234, 3456…) In this way the listener can participate every time the text is repeated in the next strophe.

A few other romances may be sung as dirges or for Tisha B'Av (literally, the ninth of the month of Av, a day of fasting to commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem). On the occasion of a death in the family, professional women referred to as endechaderas or oinaderas used to perform a special repertoire of dirges called endechas or oínas. From this repertoire the endechadera selected those dirges whose subjects were the most appropriate to be dedicated to the deceased's memory.⁹ More recently, in Israel as well as abroad, this function declined, dislocated by the uniformity of the official death rites in modern times. According to my informants, in the late 1980s the last endechadera, from Alcazarquivir (Morocco), died in Eilat. The endechas as such became obsolete songs, seldom performed, and then only on request and not by everyone, for it is considered a bad omen to sing them.¹⁰ Some of the endechas, such as “David Mourns for Absalon” (Song 4, about King David's grief for the death of his rebel son Absalom) have retained part of their function as dirges: they are kept among the corpus of endechas or qinot for Tisha B'Av and are still sung on this fast day (Example 7.2). The text of “David Mourns for Absalom” describes a scene in which King David receives a messenger who brings sad news: David's son Absalom, who took arms against his father, died when his long hair became caught in a tree and he was stabbed there. David calls upon each of his family members to mourn for Absalom.¹¹

Song 4: David Mourns for Absalon. Regina Israel-Cohen (Izmir, Turkey).

Triste está el rey David,  triste está de corazón,

por endechar las sus angusias  subióse al mirador,

vido a sus campos vedres  como los envicia el sol,

vido venir de un pajico,  más negro que el carbón,

demandando y preguntando:   – ¿Onde está el emperador?

– El emperador sta en su palacio,  asentado en el salón.

Se echó de rodillas fuertes,  pieses y manos le besó,

– ¿D'onde vienes, el mi hijo?   – Vengo de rogar al Dio,

la novedad que vos traigo  es más negra que el carbón,

que vos mataron al vuestro hijo,  vuestro hijo Absalón.¹²

Example 7.2 “David Mourns for Absalon.”

III Cancionero

The songs of the cancionero are called canticas or cantigas by the Eastern (Ottoman Balkan) Sephardim, and cantares or cantes by the Moroccan Sephardim. Like the coplas, they have great versatility of texts and music, and are deeply influenced by the surrounding local cultures. Some Sephardic songs are known to be translations or adaptations of Turkish, Greek, or Bulgarian songs.

The songs of the cancionero differ from the two other genres – romancero and coplas – in textual and musical structure, involving mostly quatrains (four-line strophes, with a rhyme scheme of abab or with only the second and fourth lines rhyming), very often with a refrain; accordingly, the melodies are strophic, with a different tune for the refrain. The texts of these songs are not continuous, either according to a narrative or by any other means, and the order of the strophes is not fixed (as in the Turkish şarkı). Their subject matter is mostly lyric.

In its performance the Cancionero has more variable traits. The canticas or cantigas are sung either as solos or by groups, and by men and women. A distinct corpus of songs from the Cancionero forms an important part of the nuptial repertoire (cantigas de novia or de boda), as they are performed at the various ceremonies of the Sephardic wedding and are accompanied, in both Eastern and Western communities, by percussion instruments, especially the tambourine, which is called pandero or panderico in the Eastern area and sonaja in Morocco. The most common metric pattern for the accompaniment in both areas is the duple 2/4; in the Balkan states, 7/8 and 9/8 are more typical, and in the Moroccan repertoire, 6/8 is found (often in the “hemiola” type: 3/8 + 3/8 + 2/8 + 2/8 + 2/8).

The wedding songs are sung or led mostly by the women, especially those for specific wedding rituals at which only women are present, such as the bathing or dressing of the bride. A common manner of performing the wedding repertoire in both the Ottoman and the Moroccan areas is to sing a series of different songs that share a common rhythmic organization. One well-known song in this genre is about a beautiful brunette (morena or morenica) who, as is described in the biblical Song of Songs, had white skin that darkened in the summer sun (Song 6; Example 7.3). The many strophes (only some of them are presented here) have no specific relationship to one another and may be sung in any order, although there are parallel subjects and similar enunciations in some pairs of strophes (and in other versions, even in more than two strophes) in a serial literary structure: as can be observed in the text, the first two stanzas have the same first line (the call to the brunette); likewise, in the third and fourth stanzas, we find the same first line (“tell the brunette”); and the fifth and sixth stanzas again share the same opening line (“the brunette gets dressed”) and a similar formulation about what colors the brunette wears, with comparisons to different varieties of fruit. Each strophe is followed by a refrain ending in the Greek words mavra matiamu, meaning “black eyes” (probably inherited from a Greek song). The melody is in makam Bayati (a mode with the second scaled degree, lowered to half mol – an interval smaller than the half-step – with the dominant occurring on the fourth degree).

Song 6: The call to the brunette. Rahel Altalef-Brenner (Izmir, Turkey).

Morenica a mi me llaman

Blanca yo nací:

El sol del en verano

M'hizo a mi ansí.

  Morenica, graciosica sos,

  Morenica y graciosica y mavra matiamu.

Morenica a me llaman

Los marineros,

Si otra vez me llaman

Me vo con ellos.

  Morenica, graciosica sos,

  Morenica y graciosica y mavra matiamu.¹⁷

Example 7.3 “Morenica.”

Weddings commonly involved the participation of a semi-professional female singer called a cantadera, and the accompaniment of pandero-players called tañederas. These performers were specially invited to every joyful event, such as weddings and circumcisions. They were not payed directly for their participation, but cash donations from the public were collected during their performances to benefit causes such as the dowry of a poor bride, or the purchase of children's clothing for families in need. In terms of status, there was great pride in being a cantadera or a tañedera.

In addition to playing the tambourine as instrumental accompaniment, Moroccan Sephardic women add the castanets, which are often held on the middle finger of one hand and stroked by the fingers of the other hand. In the Turkish area the women often use the parmak zili (in Turkish: finger-cymbals), two pairs of tiny cymbals attached to the thumb and middle finger of each hand. The darbuka or dumbelek (a cup-shaped drum made of clay or metal, with one skin) are played in both regions, and Bulgarian Sephardic men also play a large cylindrical double-skin drum called a baraban.

The last example is from Bulgaria (Song 7). It is a wedding song performed at the marriage feast, and its music has a rhythmic structure in 9/8 meter, ordered as 2+2+2+3, a pattern widely used in Balkan folklore.

Song 7. Las casas de la boda – Group of Sephardim (Sofia, Bulgaria).

Oy, que casas tan hermosas,

para que bailen las novias

para bodas,

para bodas, las mis siñoras,

ésta y otra.

Tra la la…

Adientro bailan las damas

afuera bailan galanas

para bodas,

para bodas, la mi siñora,

esta y otra.¹⁸

In Jewish wedding feasts, celebrants hired professional musicians, some of whom were gentile performers. In such cases, instrumentalists (violin, ’ud, daire, kanun) of different origins participated: there were ensembles of gypsies, known as ziganos, or of Greeks, called banda de gregos, or Turkish players called chalguí (Tur.: çalgı) or chalguigís (Tur.: çalgıcı) who, through their frequent participation at such occasions, knew the Judeo-Spanish repertoire and could accompany the cantigas de boda in addition to playing dance music (including Turkish dances, as well as the waltz, foxtrot, tango, and other Western genres).

Performance of Sephardic songs today

The preceding descriptions of traditions associated with the performance of Sephardic songs reflect musical practices in Sephardic communities before the twentieth century, when modernity and European influence brought about changes in the preservation and performance of Sephardic songs, and, in most cases, caused the tradition to be almost forgotten. As is well known, the preservation and continued performance of any musical tradition depends on its functionality, but the practices sustaining the Sephardic musico-poetic repertoire began to decline by the middle of the nineteenth century, with the modernization of society. The new generations, especially those born in the new settings to which their parents had immigrated, tried to fit in amid their new surroundings, learning the local languages and customs, and in most cases they did not maintain the Judeo-Spanish languages or the cultural treasures of their elders. It seemed that there would be no continuity to the Sephardic musico-poetic tradition. Thus, the performance of the Judeo-Spanish repertoire found its place on stage, in the renditions of professional artists interested in this repertoire in a great wave of Sephardic renaissance.

The deep interest in the Sephardic musico-poetic repertoire inspired the appearance of an astonishing number of professional performers. Many soloists and ensembles (mostly not of Sephardic descent) chose to specialize in the Sephardic repertoire in stage performances and on sound recordings. I will not get into a discussion about the necessity, importance, or desirability (questioned by some scholars and even entirely denied by others) of this phenomenon, nor shall I touch on its sociological aspect (including its impact on the public and questions of the cultural backgrounds and ages of audiences, etc.), but its buoyant and thriving existence must be acknowledged.

Such performances of the Sephardic repertoire on the stage and in sound media often involved a very small part of the rich Judeo-Spanish repertoire and were based on careless transcriptions of the authentic sources. Furthermore, these performances were accompanied by instrumental arrangements for ensembles that were absolutely alien to the original style and required (and – alas! – achieved) a pitiful simplification of the rich melodic ornamentation and varied rhythmic structures that characterized the music of the Sephardic repertoire, ignoring even the Oriental modal organization that was the basis of its melodies.

I will consider here some of the aspects of this phenomenon that I might name the “stage-recycling of the Sephardic repertoire,” and point out its problems. In order to understand the problematics of stage performance it is important to consider the wide gap between what we could call “the natural situation of the traditional event,” and this “stage-recycling of the repertoire.” This gap is related to the dichotomy between performer and public in contemporary performance, a dichotomy that does not exist in the traditional setting, where, even if the audience members do not know all the songs performed, they feel a sense of belonging in relation to the event. Even if they cannot sing along to every verse, they are involved in a sort of “passive participation,” based, 1) on the general knowledge of the repertoire and the outline of its contents; and 2) on the learned ability to recognize the context of and feelings expressed in each song.

Especially important among the general traits of contemporary “stage-recycling” performances is the loss of the musical context, through the separation of the songs from the activities they used to accompany. An example of this decontextualization is the romance of “The husband's return,” with the incipit “Lavaba la blanca niña” (see Song 2 above), which used to be sung in Saloniki when the women of the bride's family assembled to wash the wool for the mattresses and pillows for the new couple; this romance has now become a nostalgic souvenir, as this activity is no longer necessary and all the dowry can be bought ready-made. Despite the ethnomusicologist's expectations of professional performers, it is certainly very difficult for them to build a new bridge over the abyss opened by the loss of context.

The question of how close one can come to reproducing the original performance practice is not an easy one. Two aspects are to be considered here: voice and instruments. The first is the most difficult, because the professional artist probably had vocal training that does not correspond to the typical vibrant singing voice of the Sephardim. Recognizing this challenge, I most enthusiastically applaud the efforts of some contemporary groups to lower the register of their voices and change their timbre. The second aspect, instrumental accompaniment, is one method by which professional artists attempt to make their Sephardic songs more likeable for their audiences. The accompaniment practices of today's professional performers of this song repertoire can be classified into four groups:

1. 1) those that prefer the “old look,” with medieval or Renaissance instruments and corresponding vocal settings (and sometimes even costumes from those eras);

2. 2) those that turn to the eastern sources, using instruments such as the ’ud, qanun, darbuqa (a globlet-shaped drum), and, of course, tambourines of different sizes;

3. 3) those that perform solo and do not budge, setting all kinds of Sephardic tunes to the ill-suited and limiting chords of the guitar; and

4. 4) those that choose their instrumental accompaniment according to the song, considering its social function, its original mode of performance, and the time of its origin: medieval instruments for epic romances, ’ud for certain songs and coplas from the life-cycle repertoire, guitar for the more modern canzonetta-style love songs, or just panderos (tambourines) for the eastern Sephardic wedding songs, with the addition of castanets for the Moroccan Sephardic wedding repertoire.

Thus the contemporary professional performance of this repertoire is varied, and the performers’ choices testify to their musical sensibility and historical and cultural knowledge.

The impossibility of recreating the tightly knit form of communication between the singer and the group (as it occurred in the traditional performance settings) has led professional performers to seek different solutions, many of which are ill-advised. One technique for attracting the public's attention, shared by stage performers of all sorts, involves the use of lighting to define the spaces of the performer and the public. We know, however, that lighting, most certainly, does not bring the audience any closer to the singer on stage, nor does it enhance the feeling of belonging that characterizes the traditional setting. Many performers also sing selections of a reduced and stereotyped repertoire, ignoring the best jewels of the Sephardic musico-poetic heritage in favor of a set of five or six well-known pieces, almost all of them lyric songs (about the sufferings and joys of love), and learned mostly from earlier commercial records.

One bright light shines from those groups that, having a greater sensibility for the tradition, have started to look for authentic sources, renewing the repertoire on stage with songs from local repertoires, with no fear concerning the acceptance of this “new” material by their audience.¹⁹ Audiences, following these groups’ choices with interest, seem to have begun to open up and enjoy gratefully the “new” gifts from the Sephardic repertoire. And here we will conclude this chapter by allowing the subject of how to perform Sephardic songs on stage today to remain an open question.

Introduction

In contemporary usage, klezmer music designates various genres of vernacular music associated with the Yiddish-speaking Jews of eastern Europe and their descendents. Klezmer music has undergone a worldwide revival since the 1970s, becoming one of the most popular world music genres, generating numerous hybrid forms, and influencing and interacting with musics as diverse as indie rock, avant-garde jazz, and contemporary art music.

In rabbinic Hebrew the compound kley-zemer meant “musical instruments.”¹ By the sixteenth century, klezmer was used by Yiddish-speaking Jews in eastern Europe to signify instrumentalists.² More specifically, klezmer (pl. klezmorim, klezmer, or klezmers) referred to the largely hereditary socioeconomic group of professional and semi-professional Jewish instrumentalists who performed at weddings and other family and communal celebrations in the Jewish life and calendrical cycles of eastern Europe. Often viewed from within traditional Jewish society as religiously suspect because of their frequent contacts with women and non-Jews and their generally lower standard of religious knowledge, klezmorim enjoyed a low social and economic status historically.

In Yiddish, klezmer was used to describe the repertoire and style of the music performed by klezmorim at least as early as the mid-1920s.³ In English, such usage dates to 1970–1,⁴ but its widespread popularity first came through the late-1970s recordings of early American klezmer revivalists such as The Klezmorim (East Side Wedding, 1977) and Andy Statman and Zev Feldman (Jewish Klezmer Music, 1979).

As a result of the klezmer revival, the meaning of the term klezmer music has broadened in common usage over the past four decades. Today it is used to describe not only the music performed by klezmorim of various periods historically, but also a panoply of genres and styles that have emerged since the revival, as well as a number of hybrid genres that have been influenced by klezmer music.

The origins of klezmer music lie in twelfth-century Ashkenaz.⁵ There, wedding music and entertainment was provided by all-around Jewish entertainers known as Spielleute (minstrels) or letsonim,⁶ who sang, clowned, and played instruments. An early form of klezmer music was likely brought to eastern Europe by Jewish refugees from Ashkenaz fleeing Christian persecution from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. There, the klezmer tradition developed across approximately 500 years in interaction with the traditional musical cultures of the lands where Jews settled. Over the course of several centuries, these included parts of Imperial Russia (Congress Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, western Belorussia, western Ukraine, and Bessarabia), the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Galicia, Bukovina, Máramaros, Slovakia, Subcarpathian Rus), and Romania (Moldavia).

Klezmer in eastern Europe

The earliest evidence of klezmorim in eastern Europe is from sixteenth-century Poland. Klezmorim were an urban phenomenon, with the vast majority of them living in the Jewish towns (shtetls),⁷ as opposed to in villages or in the countryside. They formed bands known as kapelyes, khavrusas, or kompanyes, and were present in most towns and cities with a sizable Jewish population by the eighteenth century.⁸

Developed in a society guided by religious principles with gender separation, klezmer music was a male dominion until the early twentieth century, at which point it became possible, but never typical, for women to play prior to the klezmer revival. Until the second half of the nineteenth century (and into the twentieth in some regions), klezmorim were organized into close-knit guilds.⁹ They had their own specific lifestyle (lebns-shteyger), as well as their own secret argot, known as labushinske, klezmer-loshn, or klezmer-shprakh.¹⁰ Klezmeray (the klezmer profession), with its attendant musical repertoire and style and lifestyle was passed on in oral tradition within families of musicians, often over the course of many generations. Receiving no formal training, the typical klezmer received his first music lessons from a male family member, later apprenticing to a klezmer in another town.¹¹ The kapelyes were organized along the lines of a partnership with aspects of a mutual aid society. The bandleader, who was usually the first violinist, took the largest share of the earnings and each other member received a proportional share, and they took care of their ill and retired.¹²

Klezmorim appeared especially at celebrations associated with the traditional wedding, the most important ritual in the Jewish life cycle, which would normally last for an entire week and sometimes longer.¹³ Klezmorim performed for disparate groups, a result of their professional status and their reputation for having a high level of skill on their instruments, as well as their not being able to make an adequate living from playing for Jewish weddings and festivities alone. They thus performed for the mostly Polish landowning aristocracy as well as for peasants of a number of ethnicities, including Ukrainians, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Poles, Belorussians, Romanians, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Germans, depending upon their geographical location. Within the Jewish context, klezmorim also had to know repertoire appropriate for specific holy days (Purim, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, and Hanukkah), for dedications of new Torah scrolls, and especially for the various Hasidic dynasties.

The ascendancy of Hasidism had a profound effect on the development of klezmer music.¹⁴ Among Hasidim, music, singing, and dance were central because they were considered to be even more important than prayer itself in attaining devekut, a state of communion between man and god.¹⁵ Many klezmorim were themselves Hasidim or stemmed from Hasidic families. In addition, klezmorim acted as mediators and transmitters of music not only between the various Hasidic groups, but also between Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews. These included the ultra-orthodox opponents of Hasidism known as mitnagdim, less strictly observant factions within communal life that emerged in the wake of the Haskalah,¹⁶ and even followers of the myriad secular political movements that took hold in eastern Europe over the course of the nineteenth century, such as socialism, anarchism, and Zionism.

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century klezmer ensembles comprised primarily combinations of violin, string bass, and a hammered dulcimer known as the tsimbl. Most of our knowledge about klezmorim regarding instrumentation, repertoire, and style begins in the nineteenth century. By the first half of the nineteenth century, the eastern European klezmer bands typically ranged from three to five instruments in varying combinations of violin, tsimbl, transverse flute, clarinet, and a Turkish-style bass drum with attached cymbal, known as poyk mit tatsn. By the 1870s, the size of the typical ensemble had generally increased, especially in the larger towns. Small orchestras of from ten to fourteen men were common. These larger groups consisted typically of several violins, viola, cello, contrabass, clarinets, wooden flutes, trumpets or cornets, valve trombones and other low brass, and poyk.¹⁷ By the end of the century, snare or field drum had been introduced as well.¹⁸ The lead melodic instruments in the nineteenth century were violin and flute, and later, clarinet and trumpet. The tsimbl appears to have been used primarily as a solo melodic instrument. The relationship of the klezmer to his audience, the wedding guests, was particularly close. The best players were valued for their “philosophizing” or “moralizing” on their instruments, and were known to have deeply moved their listeners.¹⁹

Although klezmorim were often depicted as wandering musicians, the territory covered by the typical kapelye in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was usually limited to a radius of thirty to forty kilometers. The musicians had families and typically returned home for the Sabbath. There are accounts, however, of klezmorim traveling as far as Constantinople to perform.²⁰ The fame and influence of a few instrumentalists was national or, even, international in scope, although most klezmorim were not known outside their own region or even their own town and its environs. The klezmer kapelyes in the Ukraine and other areas did not always consist of Jews only. The orchestras typically employed non-Jewish musicians for a specific purpose, such as for their knowledge of regional repertoires like various Ukrainian or Polish peasant styles. Besides the klezmorim, the other group of professional entertainment musicians in eastern Europe, particularly in the southeastern regions, were Roma (Gypsies). Klezmorim and Romani musicians (lăutari) interacted with one another and sometimes were members of each other's ensembles, especially in areas such as Russian Bessarabia (now Republic of Moldova) and Romanian Moldavia.²¹

Early popular performers of klezmer included the xylophonist Mikhoel-Yoysef Guzikov (Shklov, Belarus, 1806–37), who became one of the most famous European concert artists of the 1830s, as well as the violinists Arn-Moyshe Kholodenko (“Pedotser,” Berditchev, Ukraine, 1828–1902) and Yosele Druker (“Stempenyu,” Berditchev, Ukraine, 1822–79).²² By the late nineteenth century many klezmorim were musically literate. Klezmer music and, especially, style continued to be a primarily orally transmitted tradition. Many musicians born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century began their training as klezmorim, but as teenagers moved into classical music via the Russian conservatories. Such was the case with cellist and popular bandleader Joseph Cherniavsky (1894–1975), reputedly a relative of Stempenyu. In an era of music making where there was no clear differentiation between high and low culture,²³ Cherniavsky enjoyed conservatory training as a cellist and conductor in Russia and Germany, performed as a chamber musician, and later composed Yiddish theater scores and popular songs, was associated with Hollywood film studios, and led popular dance bands and klezmer orchestras in the US.²⁴ In addition, a number of well-known classical virtuosi stemmed from klezmer families, including violinist Mischa Elman (1891–1967) and cellist Emanuel Feuermann (1902–42).

The emergence of a Yiddish popular music culture in the mid-nineteenth century in the urban centers of eastern Europe represents the beginning of a process by which klezmer music began to transform itself into a popular and increasingly secularized genre. The existence of popular song brought new possibilities for klezmer musicians, and a number of instrumentalists toured as the musical accompaniment to troupes of café house entertainers (broder-zinger), or became involved as performers and/or composers in the new professional Yiddish theater that was founded in 1876 in Romania and rapidly spread throughout the Yiddish-speaking world.

The influence of this repertoire is already apparent in the first commercial European recordings of klezmer music made in the years immediately preceding World War I,²⁵ which contain instrumental versions of popular songs from the Yiddish theater in addition to traditional instrumental numbers. Klezmorim and descendents of klezmer families also became prominent within the realm of general entertainment musical culture. In interwar Poland, for example, performer-composers such as Jerzy Petersburski (1895/97–1979), Henryk Gold (1898/1902–77), Arthur Gold (1903–43), and Władysław Szpilman (1911–2000) – all descendents of klezmer families – dominated Polish popular music,²⁶ composing in particular many original tangos.²⁷ During this period, the flexibility of the professional klezmorim enabled them to expand their repertoire and their performance venues to please an increasingly secular audience. The same wedding musicians who performed nigunim (tunes of spiritual elevation) for Hasidic rebbes (dynastic leaders) and paraliturgical pieces prior to the wedding ceremony might appear at a May Day rally and were familiar with the latest waltzes and tangos, as well as jazz and other vernacular styles imported from the US.

The klezmer profession essentially had come to an end in the Soviet Union after the Revolution. The main exception appears to have been the State Ensemble of Jewish Folk Musicians of the Ukrainian SSR, assembled in 1937 during a brief period of Soviet support for Yiddish culture as part of its nationalities policy. The ensemble, which was dissolved in 1939, made recordings, performed on the radio, and appeared live in Culture Houses, at health resorts, on Jewish collective farms, and in cities with large Jewish populations, as well as at mass political events such as those commemorating the anniversary of the October Revolution.²⁸

Due to a complex series of factors, including World War I, the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the Holocaust, and Stalinism, the klezmer tradition in Europe all but ceased to exist after the late 1930s. The few surviving klezmorim who returned to their countries of origin had lost their audience and context. Marian Fuks writes, for example, about the Polish klezmer violinist Marek Goldman, who survived the war in the Soviet Union, later settling in Wrocław, where he died in 1981,²⁹ and the life of Leopold Kozłowski, a nephew of clarinetist Naftule Brandwein (see below), has been documented on CD and in the film, “The Last Klezmer” (1994).

Remaining Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union was actively suppressed during the Stalinist purges of 1948–53. In the aftermath of Stalin's death in 1953, Jewish orchestras did reappear in the Soviet Union, but unofficially. These musicians do not appear to have been descendants of the pre-Revolution klezmer families. They performed primarily at Jewish weddings in the Ukraine, Moldavia and other regions with large Jewish populations. Their repertoire included traditional klezmer and Moldavian tunes, as well as popular Yiddish folk, thieves’, and theater songs, Israeli tunes, and American popular songs and dances. A number of these musicians emigrated to the US, Western Europe, and Israel since the 1970s, most notably the clarinetist German Goldenshteyn (1934–2006) from Mogilev-Podolsk, Ukraine, who settled in New York and became well known as a collector, teacher, and performer of Soviet klezmer repertoire.

Klezmer in the US

Included among the Russian and other eastern European Jews who settled abroad during the great immigration wave of 1881–1924 were many musicians who would bring traditional klezmer music to the US and other countries where they settled. During that time, the center of Yiddish cultural production shifted largely to New York. There Yiddish-speakers developed a transitional immigrant culture over a seventy-year period that created an amalgam of eastern European and American religious and secular attributes.³⁰ Whereas in eastern Europe Jews had lived predominantly in the shtetl, in North America they settled voluntarily in the crowded immigrant quarters of large cities. By 1915, there were 140,000 Jews in New York, representing 28 percent of the total population and creating the largest single concentration of Jews in history.³¹ Other urban areas with significant Jewish populations included Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Baltimore, and each had its own smaller community of Jewish wedding musicians.³²

Jewish immigrants in New York and other North American cities enjoyed a rich musical and entertainment culture, within which klezmer music occupied a small but specific niche, the dominant Jewish musical forms being cantorial music and Yiddish-language operetta. The existence of a Jewish Musicians Union in the late 1880s shows that Jewish musicians were active in New York from the earliest years of immigration.³³ Klezmer musicians were quick to diversify their playing opportunities, and the music began to be heard even more frequently in non-ritual contexts. By then, a number of wine cellars, cafés, and restaurants had sprung up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Many of these had musical entertainment, as did the many dance halls, and klezmorim got involved performing at such establishments, as well as at parades, picnics, benefit concerts, and even strikes of the various unions and political parties.³⁴ In the US context, the term klezmer gradually took on a negative connotation among upwardly mobile musicians who were trying to assimilate and broaden their professional realm. To them, “klezmer” referred to a player of limited abilities, who was unable to learn new styles of music and only capable of carrying out the function of Jewish wedding musician. Depending on their level of musical literacy and flexibility, they may have played in the Yiddish theater and vaudeville, on Yiddish-language radio, and in a plethora of mainstream musical contexts such as in hotel dance orchestras, accompanying silent films, in vaudeville and burlesque theaters, on Broadway, in brass bands and symphony orchestras, and on radio and film, as well as in the recording studios. Continuing a pattern already established in Europe, New York klezmorim often performed for and sometimes with members of various European ethnic communities, including Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, Hungarians, Roma, Greeks, Turks, Germans, and Italians, as well as for Sephardic Jews.

The leading klezmer musicians during the immigrant era were the clarinet soloists Naftule Brandwein (1884–1963) and Dave Tarras (1895–1989). Both of them had been fully experienced, professional klezmorim and members of established klezmer families in eastern Europe prior to their emigration. They were highly respected by musicians and audiences alike for their abilities in interpreting traditional klezmer music.

It was the landsmanshaftn and similar immigrant organizations that formed the center of klezmer activity in New York and other cities.³⁵ The members of such organizations tended to be older, Yiddish-speaking, working class, and orthodox or of an orthodox background, and they generally acculturated less rapidly, and were most likely to organize traditional weddings and other celebrations where klezmer music was likely to be heard. The musical tastes of the members seem to have remained distinctly European, and the music the immigrants favored comprised largely the down-home Yiddish and European dances they had known prior to emigration.³⁶

The issue of acculturation became an increasing factor as the first generation of American-born Jews came of age and, especially, after the virtual stop in immigration in 1924 brought about by restrictive legislation. It gradually affected all aspects of immigrant life, including religious observance, communal organizations, Yiddish literacy, and theater attendance. In the midst of the acculturational process, klezmer music reached the zenith of its popularity from the late 1910s to the late 1930s. It was during this period that the classic recordings of musicians such as Brandwein and Tarras, as well as of clarinetist Shloimke Beckerman (1883–1974) and bandleader Abe Schwartz (1881–1963) in New York, and bandleader Harry Kandel (1885–1943) in Philadelphia, were made for Columbia, Victor, Brunswick, Emerson, Pathé, and other labels.³⁷

Wedding bands in New York consisted of an overlapping membership drawn from a limited pool of perhaps 200 accomplished players. Klezmer music, which appears to have had a relatively uniform repertoire and style over a large geographic area in eastern Europe, became even more homogeneous in New York, due to the close physical proximity of the musicians and the freelance structures of the engagements. Within this framework, though, some klezmer groups were still organized along family lines – for example the Brandweins, the Levitts (Levinskys), and the Kutchers – and members of the families attempted to guard their repertoire zealously.

Changes in the composition of klezmer bands in America consisted of several elements. New instruments were introduced to the ensemble, most notably the saxophone (which was usually played by the clarinetist), the piano, and, in the 1930s, the piano accordion. The poyk and the small drum were replaced by the modern drum set, which could be played by one musician; the slide trombone replaced the valve trombone; silver flutes replaced the wooden ones; and, in some cases, Boehm system clarinets replaced the Albert (Müller) system clarinets used in Europe. The B-flat clarinet gradually replaced the C clarinet as well. Finally, the tendency throughout the 1920s was towards smaller ensembles. This, in combination with a stronger emphasis on dance music, led to the gradual disappearance of violins from the ensemble. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the standard small wedding band consisted of a quartet of clarinet doubling on saxophone, trumpet, piano, and drums.

At the same time that these changes were taking place, bandleaders perceived the need to be seen as popular entertainers and began to incorporate elements of showmanship into their performances. During the 1920s, musicians in the vanguard of this process included Cherniavsky, who, together with his Yiddish American Jazz Band, performed on the vaudeville circuit dressed up as Hasidim or Cossacks, and Brandwein, who was known for wearing an electric “Uncle Sam” suit on the bandstand or performing the clarinet under a spotlight wearing a pair of white gloves.

During the early decades of immigration, the traditional wedding in North America continued to occupy an important place in the Jewish life cycle, and it was still to remain the most important occasion for the performance of music by klezmorim. The entire wedding, which was now mostly reduced in length to one-day events, most often took place in a catering hall. The music performed at early American Jewish weddings does not appear to have differed significantly from that which had been played at weddings in eastern Europe. In addition, the musicians also performed the same repertoire in a number of other Jewish settings, most notably the bar mitzvah, the importance of which increased dramatically after the 1920s.³⁸ The mountainous region north of New York known as the Catskills became the most popular resort area for immigrant Jews and their children, burgeoning especially between the years 1883 and 1906.³⁹ In the 1920s, the resort hotels began to bring in cabaret performers, and musicians such as Schwartz, Brandwein, and Tarras would also appear during summers in the Catskills.

The New York klezmer tradition began to decline in the 1930s, yet even into the 1950s and 1960s, the musicians performed annually for the surviving members of the landsmanshaftn. The decline may be attributed to a combination of factors that included acculturation among the American-born, restrictive immigration legislation, and the Great Depression. While most of the children of the European-born players became musicians and carried on their family traditions to a certain extent, almost all were multi-musical, equally versed in klezmer music and various American vernacular styles. Almost without exception, the members of the second American-born generation either left the realm of klezmer music or did not become musicians at all.

Despite the general decline in Yiddish culture, for a time the musicians regrouped, developed new styles and repertoires, and created new markets. A new type of American klezmer music flowered briefly in the 1930s and 1940s, fostered in part by the popularity of Yiddish radio and a revival in ethnic music recording in New York. The new style was fuelled by the composition of new Romanian- and Greek-influenced dance tunes by Tarras and his contemporaries. In addition, the influence of popular songs from the American-Yiddish operettas, as well as the entry into the Jewish wedding bands of American-born musicians, were contributing factors to changes in klezmer repertoire and style beginning in the 1930s. It was also during the 1930s that the percentage of American music performed at Jewish weddings dramatically increased. Typical repertoire of that period included foxtrots and other American dances, the Yiddish dances sher, freylekhs, and bulgar, as well as Russian and Polish tangos, waltzes, the Hungarian csárdás, polkas, polka mazurkas, and Polish obereks. Jewish bands also began to hire singers to perform American pop songs.

By the late 1930s, immigrant bandleaders were competing with a younger generation of American-born clarinet musicians who were equally competent in the American repertoire, especially the clarinetists Max Epstein (1912–2000) and Tarras’ son-in-law Sam Musiker (1916–64). In order to remain competitive, they would hire such American-born musicians to play in their bands. Some of the American-born musicians, most notably Musiker, experimented with fusions of klezmer and swing jazz.

By the 1940s, a number of the Jewish wedding orchestras in New York consisted entirely of American-born children of eastern European Jewish immigrants, many of them from klezmer families. What these musicians brought to klezmer music was a rhythmic and harmonic sense shaped by their experiences playing in hotel and society dance orchestras, and big bands. This coincided with the emergence of so-called “club date” orchestras, generic bands that played at celebrations such as weddings, bar mitzvahs, and anniversary parties. Here it was the type of event, and not the religion or ethnicity, that became the determining factor, and the music we now know as “klezmer” was largely subsumed within the general club date field.

The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 brought about a general shift in orientation among the American Jewish community from its eastern European past and Yiddish culture to the nascent Hebrew-Israeli culture. The creation of a new Hebrew folk music as a unifying factor played an important role in the establishment of the new state,⁴⁰ and the new orientation brought about a dramatic shift in repertoire at American Jewish weddings as well: the older, eastern European and European-style repertoire was quickly replaced in many contexts by Israeli horas of recent vintage. Despite this shift in orientation, however, klezmer music continued to be performed in cities like New York and Philadelphia after 1948 to an aging and rapidly dwindling audience.

The US saw an influx of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of World War II. Among these were followers of various Hasidic dynasties, who settled predominantly in Brooklyn, New York. With their traditional Judaism and high birth rates, these new immigrants provided a significant new market for European- and, especially, American-born Jewish wedding musicians, who had to learn a repertoire of nigunim that was almost entirely new to them directly from the immigrants and their children. In addition to the Hasidim, many of the non-Hasidic survivors had grown up in an interwar Europe radically different from that of pre-war immigrants. Among other things, they listened and danced to music that represented the significant and rapid changes the Jewish communities had undergone in Europe during the interwar years. Several musicians capitalized on that repertoire, especially bandleader and clarinetist Marty Levitt (1930–2008).⁴¹

The period of revitalization among the New York klezmer musicians was, however, short-lived. The advent of rock and roll in the 1950s and changing musical aesthetics – also among the ultra-orthodox – led to the gradual obsolescence of even the American-born musicians. Although a few of these performers are still alive and playing today, their music would not really be appreciated again until after the emergence of the klezmer revival movement in the mid-1970s.

Klezmer music in Israel and elsewhere

In Israel, a parallel, yet separate klezmer tradition developed from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, as Hasidic pilgrims to the Holy Land settled in the northern Galilee in Safed and Tiberias, and in Jerusalem.⁴² There klezmer has enjoyed a continuous development to the present day.⁴³ In Israel the clarinet had already become the most important instrument in the klezmer ensemble before the turn of the twentieth century. At that time, the ensembles were small, usually not more than three instruments, which typically comprised combinations of clarinets, violins, trumpets, and drums. Later, accordion was added to the ensembles. While this music also based on the eastern European klezmer tradition, it is not clear whether the Israeli klezmorim were descendants of European klezmer families or not. Style and repertoire were also strongly influenced by local musical traditions, such as that of Arab Druze, and of the Ottoman Turkish military bands. The founder of the modern Israeli klezmer tradition, which exists almost exclusively within Haredi (ultra-orthodox) and National Religious (orthodox Zionist) circles, is considered to be the clarinetist Avraham Segal (1908–93). After his retirement in the early 1970s, the leading role in Israeli klezmer music has been taken on by Segal's protégé, Moshe “Moussa” Berlin (b. 1938), who since 1992 has made numerous recordings of klezmer and Hasidic music.⁴⁴ Today the Israeli klezmer ensembles typically consist of clarinet (saxophone), electric guitar, synthesizer, and drums. The most prominent member of the younger generation of Israeli klezmer musicians is clarinetist Chilik Frank, in Jerusalem.

Although no systematic study in other countries has been carried out to date, klezmer music appears to have been performed in virtually all large immigrant communities where eastern European Jews settled, such as Toronto, Santiago de Chile, Rio de Janiero, and Buenos Aires. For example, the clarinetist Sam Liberman, originally from Safed, Israel, settled in Buenos Aires sometime after World War I, where he led Argentinian jazz bands and Jewish dance bands and became a well-known recording artist. Also from Buenos Aires was the clarinetist Leo Feidman (d. 1980) and his son, Giora (b. 1936), who both settled in Israel. Buenos Aires became the second largest recording center for Yiddish music in the Americas after New York. In Toronto, klezmer music was dominated by members of the Szpilman (Spellman), Barsht (Barsh), Baigelman, Levak, and Lustig families, who were mostly interrelated.

The klezmer revival

Following a relatively brief period of decline, already in the late 1960s there was an incipient revival of interest in Yiddish language and culture in the United States.⁴⁵ The klezmer revival can trace its roots to the same period, and by the mid-1970s, the first klezmer bands began to perform publicly and record. As folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has pointed out, this development coincided with the end of what historian Haim Soloveitchik termed “self-evident Jewishness,”⁴⁶ in which the klezmer revival was one possible outcome of the tension between tradition and ideology that existed at that time.⁴⁷

The klezmer revival had its beginnings among a small number of young American Jews on the West and East Coasts of the United States, almost all of whom were born in the 1950s and most of whom neither stemmed from klezmer families nor had intimate prior knowledge of klezmer or other Yiddish musical traditions. The revival can be viewed as the outgrowth of both a climate of American Jewish reassessment in the aftermath of the Holocaust and a general ethnic roots seeking and empowerment in the wake of the civil rights and black power movements.⁴⁸ Its emergence coincided roughly with the US Bicentennial celebrations and, among other things, the publication of both Alex Haley's Roots and Irving Howe's World of Our Fathers in 1976.⁴⁹ The revival began largely outside Jewish communal structures in the counterculture. The climate of large-scale acceptance after 1948 of the new Hebrew-Israeli culture as the valid expression of postwar secular Jewishness caused most of an entire generation of American Jews to become alienated from the richness of their eastern European Jewish heritage. Early klezmer revivalists were often surprised to find that their own ethnic group had a musical heritage comparable to Balkan and other traditional music forms with which they already had experience.⁵⁰

Some cite the klezmer revival as an attempt by these young American Jews, mostly secular and well educated, and often from families where Yiddish was no longer spoken at home, to forge an ethnic identity apart from Israel, at the same time rejecting the notion that the center of Jewish history is occupied by the Holocaust. The increasingly right-wing politics of the Israeli government in the post-Six-Day War period did not sit well with the left-liberal ideologies of many of the 1960s generation, and one solution was to look to the eastern European past for suitable cultural models. Furthermore, within the general trend towards reaffiliation with Jewishness since the 1960s, klezmer was a simple route to Jewish self-identification, since it required no knowledge of religion or language.⁵¹ Finally, the emergence of the klezmer revival can be interpreted as a means of healing the multiple ruptures of Jewish cultural continuity,⁵² be it from the destruction of Yiddish-speaking, Eastern European Jewry in the Holocaust, the crisis in American Judaism resulting from the presumed diminishing of tribal connections, or the apparent failure of Jewish assimilation in the wake of the advent of US multiculturalism.

The klezmer revival was initially popularized by LP releases by the groups The Klezmorim (East Side Wedding, 1977; Streets of Gold, 1978) in Berkeley, Andy Statman and Zev Feldman (Jewish Klezmer Music, 1979) and Kapelye (Future & Past, 1981) in New York, and the Boston-based Klezmer Conservatory Band (Yiddishe Renaissance, 1981).⁵³ The concerts and tours they generated garnered considerable media attention,⁵⁴ helping to spawn a much larger movement that continues to thrive to this day. What differentiated the klezmer revival from the other “named-systems revivals,”⁵⁵ such as blues, folk, or Balkan, was that here the majority of the participants were reviving their own cultural traditions.

Statman, already a prominent bluegrass mandolinist at the time, and Feldman, a linguist and ethnomusicologist, began to study with Tarras in the mid-1970s. Their work with him led to a US National Endowment for the Arts-funded project under the auspices of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York (then Balkan Arts Center), which included performances and a recording (Music for the Traditional Wedding, 1979). The efforts of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance led to Tarras being one of the first recipients of the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship in 1984.

The performance styles of the Klezmorim and Statman and Feldman defined early on the extreme parameters of the klezmer revival. Taken together with the contributions of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and Kapelye, the core of most of the trends that would later develop in the klezmer revival was already present.⁵⁶ The early revival was dominated by the commercial success of the Klezmorim, formed in 1975. Their two high-profile LPs enabled them to tour nationally by 1978. Their combination of street music sensibility, new vaudeville aesthetic, and energetic and witty delivery enabled them to tap into college and festival audiences, as well as the fine arts circuit. Highlights of their career are indicative of the impact klezmer was beginning to have in mainstream popular culture: an onscreen performance in the Neil Diamond remake of The Jazz Singer (1980), a Grammy nomination in 1982 in the Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording category for Metropolis (1981), and two sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall in 1983.⁵⁷ The band's European tours in the mid- to late 1980s and early 1990s brought them popularity particularly in France. At the other extreme, Statman and Feldman's performances on clarinet and mandolin with tsimbl accompaniment, sometimes augmented by string bass, were serious and intimate, highlighting virtuosity and expressive intensity. Their repertoire emphasized both the European roots of the klezmer tradition and their connection to their mentor Tarras. Their single LP was a critical success and pointed in a direction that would not be taken up again until the early 1990s with the emergence of a historically informed performance practice aesthetic. The main innovation of both the Klezmer Conservatory Band and Kapelye was the introduction of vocals as a central part of their repertoire into what had essentially been an instrumental tradition. The vocal repertoire of both groups drew on a wide array of sources, including Yiddish musical theater and vaudeville, so-called “Yinglish” comedy,⁵⁸ Yiddish folk songs, and workers’ songs.

The period from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s was one of both consolidation and innovation for the klezmer revival. The focus of the movement broadened from mere imitation and emulation of the klezmer music of various historical periods to include innovation and the creation of new forms. The number of performers continued to grow rapidly.⁵⁹ Whereas the early revival period had been characterized by informal networks of musicians and collectors trading tunes via cassette recordings, jamming, and sharing the joy of discovering what was for most of them a still largely unknown heritage, the mid-1980s saw the beginning of institutionalized frameworks. Perhaps most significant was the founding by Henry Sapoznik of the first annual Yiddish Folk Arts Program (KlezKamp) under the auspices of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in 1985. For the first time, perhaps, klezmer style and repertoire were transmitted in a formalized group setting. A whole scene began to develop around klezmer music nationally and, eventually, internationally. A number of similar workshops and gatherings emerged in the US, Canada, and western and eastern Europe over the ensuing decades, in particular KlezKanada near Montréal (since 1996) and Yiddish Summer Weimar in Germany (founded in 2000).

Beginning in the late 1980s, new groups with more innovative agendas came to the fore. Certainly the two most important of those were the internationally based Brave Old World (Germany-USA), and the New York-based Klezmatics. Formed in 1989, Brave Old World was dedicated to creating a new, concert-oriented music based on the roots of instrumental klezmer, Yiddish song, and other eastern European Jewish and non-Jewish musical forms. The band's five CDs chart its development of what musical director Alan Bern terms “New Jewish Music,” abandoning the term klezmer entirely and incorporating also elements of jazz, art music, free improvisation, and other world musics into the mix. More than any other group, the Klezmatics, formed in 1986, have been responsible for both popularizing klezmer music to a general audience internationally and moving klezmer and Yiddish music in the direction of global popular music.⁶⁰ German world music pioneer Christoph Borkowsky Akbar invited them in 1988 to perform at the new Heimatklänge world music festival in Berlin and to record for his label, Piranha. The Klezmatics became the first klezmer band to tap into the then-incipient world music market that had emerged in the wake of the success of Paul Simon's Graceland (1986) and similar projects. The group's CD Rhythm + Jews (1991) was the first to mix traditional klezmer music and Yiddish song with elements as disparate as jazz-fusion, Arabic belly-dance music, and acid rock, and contains all of the elements that the group would perfect over the course of twenty-five years. They were also at the forefront of the introduction of instrumental soloing (of the types common in rock, jazz, or Balkan and Middle Eastern music) to a genre that had previously been based on the ornamenting of and slight variations in pre-composed melodies. Through collaborations with artists as diverse as playwright Tony Kushner, Israeli singer Chava Alberstein, choreographer Twyla Tharp, and poet Allen Ginsberg, and performances on the soundtrack of the HBO television series Sex and the City, the Klezmatics have helped to steer klezmer music into the sphere of mainstream culture. They are the first klezmer band to be awarded a Grammy, winning in 2007 in the Best Contemporary World Music Album category for their CD Wonder Wheel, albeit a recording that largely featured the sounds of American folk music in original compositions set to the lyrics of Woody Guthrie.

In the mid-1980s, leading American klezmer musicians and bands started performing regularly in Europe, beginning with tours in 1984 by Kapelye and Andy Statman. German audiences were particularly receptive to klezmer. Initially this appears to have been mostly part of the process of coming to terms with historical responsibility for the Holocaust (Vergangenheitsbewältigung). Germany has become over the course of the past thirty years perhaps the most important market for klezmer internationally. Through his onstage performances in the Berlin production of Joshua Sobol's play Ghetto in 1984, and then via an extended touring and recording schedule, Giora Feidman established, with his message of forgiveness and reconciliation, an almost continuous presence in Germany, and was largely responsible for popularizing the genre among German and then general European audiences.⁶¹ He was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the nation's highest honor, in 2001. The black hole that the Holocaust left in the middle of Europe has been filled with the sounds of klezmer music. The appearances of Feidman and the American bands inspired the formation of hundreds of German klezmer bands over the past twenty-five years, the vast majority of them comprising non-Jews. Workshops such as Yiddish Summer Weimar have proved to be both meeting grounds for klezmer musicians transnationally as well as instrumental in training a series of serious German and European students of klezmer. Some of them, such as clarinetist Christian Dawid, have gone on to national and international careers. This has provided a counterbalance to Feidman's numerous workshops, where klezmer is taught as a non-specific but empowering universal feeling that can be played by anyone.

It was not a klezmer musican, but classical violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman, who brought klezmer music its greatest notoriety and widest audience yet with his Great Performances PBS television documentary In the Fiddler's House (1995), the best-selling CD of the same name (1995), and the touring show in collaboration with the Klezmatics, Brave Old World, Andy Statman, and the Klezmer Conservatory Band (1995–7), with performances from Radio City Music Hall to Tanglewood and the Hollywood Bowl.

Clearly, by the 1990s, klezmer music had moved far beyond its originally Jewish audience and into the musical mainstream, and it is not only in Germany and Europe that a significant portion of the music's audience as well as its players are non-Jews. At the same time, within Jewish circles in the US and elsewhere, the focus of the klezmer revival has shifted from its original left-liberal secularity towards the center as it has been accepted, embraced, and, some would argue, co-opted by the various wings of organized Jewry, from Reform to Conservative and, in some cases, Orthodox. Klezmer may now be seen as being firmly ensconced in American Jewish communal life. Many Jewish community centers and synagogues have amateur and youth klezmer bands, and hardly a fundraising event takes place without musical accompaniment by a local or nationally known klezmer group.

Already by the mid-1990s, klezmer had expanded in so many musical directions that it had become difficult to speak of it as a unified musical genre. Some speak now of post-revival klezmer or even “postklezmer.”⁶² Since the mid-1990s, the focus of the klezmer revival has largely shifted away from the recordings and concert activities of the handful of musicians with international tours and record distribution to a more grassroots, community level. While cities and regions such as New York, Berlin, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, and Toronto have continued to be important magnets for klezmer activity, the revival has no specific geographic center, and regionalism plays an important role.⁶³ The scene is dominated by jam sessions, the activities of synagogue community and youth groups, and the endeavors of a myriad of local amateur, semiprofessional, and professional groups. Participants in the revival congregate physically at annual and biannual gatherings such as KlezKamp, KlezKanada, or Yiddish Summer Weimar, at festivals such as Ashkenaz in Toronto and the Jewish Culture Festival in Cracow, Poland, and in the virtual community that has emerged on the Internet, such as on the Jewish-Music electronic mailing list (founded in 1992). In addition, websites and podcasts such as www.klezmershack.com and klezmerpodcast.com cover bands, review and preview events, CDs, and other publications, and provide links to resources.

The revival in its latest phase is characterized by a great deal of eclecticism, with a variety of approaches ranging from attempts at the re-creation of a nineteenth-century eastern European performance style and an original-instruments aesthetic to contemporary improvisations often inspired only peripherally by klezmer and Yiddish music, and includes numerous attempts at fusing klezmer music with genres as disparate as salsa, flamenco, bebop, reggae, and bluegrass.

Historically informed performance practice is an important stream within the klezmer revival that began to emerge in the early 1990s, focusing especially on earlier eastern European repertoire and style. A key recording signalling this development was Bessarabian Symphony: Early Jewish Instrumental Music.⁶⁴ Some of the key groups and performers include the Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble, Budowitz, Khevrisa, Veretski Pass, the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble, and the violinists Alicia Svigals, Steven Greenman, and Deborah Strauss. In recent years, a younger generation of neo-traditional musicians has emerged, creating dynamic new music featuring original compositions based on traditional forms, most notably the clarinetist Michael Winograd and violinist Jake Shulman-Ment. In addition, the fall of the Iron Curtain opened up possibilities for musicians from the former Soviet Union to interact with musicians from the West, and a significant Russian klezmer scene has emerged since the mid-1990s. In addition, the fall of the Iron Curtain opened up possibilities for musicians from the former Soviet Union to interact with musicians from the West, and a significant post-Soviet klezmer scene has emerged since the mid-1990s with groups such as Dobranotch (St. Petersburg) and Forshpil (Riga/Berlin).

In the popular realm, perhaps the most significant voices to have emerged since the late 1990s are clarinetist David Krakauer (ex-Klezmatics) as soloist and bandleader of Klezmer Madness! and Ancestral Groove, with a mixture of traditional klezmer, rock, and funk, and Frank London, a founding member of the Klezmatics. More than any other artist besides Giora Feidman, Krakauer has also contributed to bringing klezmer music together with Western art music, performing and commissioning numerous concertos and chamber works. London has formed a number of popular ensembles that are pushing the envelope in various directions, most notably the Klezmer Brass All Stars, which mixes klezmer with Balkan music and other world musics, and the Nigunim Project with Lorin Sklamberg that presents klezmer-influenced settings of Hasidic nigunim.

Further recent trends have included the entry of klezmer onto the dance floor, especially in Europe via DJs and groups such as Yuriy Gurzhy (Berlin) and his Shtetl Superstars project and the Amsterdam Klezmer Band's work with DJ Shantel and others, as well as the emergence of klezmer bands with a punk sensibility, such as Golem (New York) and the Russian band Nayekhovichi (Moscow).

The Radical Jewish Culture movement around composer-saxophonist John Zorn emerged in the early 1990s. Originally conceived as a community of improvising musicians based primarily in Lower Manhattan, Radical Jewish Culture has become more inclusive through Zorn's founding of the Tzadik label in 1995 and networking among experimental improvising musicians internationally. The movement has been instrumental in creating a body of new music influenced by klezmer among a whole host of musical influences drawing on jazz, classical, rock, Jewish, and other world traditions. Klezmer has played a greater or lesser role in the output of the Radical Jewish Culture movement, depending on the musicians. A handful of key players are intensively involved in both, most notably London and Krakauer, and a number of musicians working at the fringes of contemporary klezmer have released their music on the Tzadik label.⁶⁵ In that musical space, the boundaries between what is klezmer and what is Radical Jewish Culture are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

At the further fringes of klezmer exist a wide variety of groups that are not expressly klezmer bands and, in most cases, are not limiting their musical framework to an eastern European Jewish one. Some are expressly Jewish-oriented groups that include klezmer influence in various degrees, such as Pharaoh's Daughter (New York); others are singer-songwriters, like Daniel Kahn and The Painted Bird (Berlin) and Geoff Berner (Vancouver), who use the energy of klezmer to infuse their song-based, cabaret-style repertoire – both cite klezmer as a major influence. Hundreds of not specifically Jewish bands, especially in the new cabaret and indie scenes, now include klezmer as one of a myriad of musical influences in their musical mix. To make things more complicated, a number of groups are drawing on klezmer, Balkan, and “Gypsy” (Romani) influences in varying combinations.⁶⁶

On the one hand, it would seem to be a misconception to consider the contemporary klezmer revival to be a direct continuation of the pre-revival tradition as it had developed over the course of centuries. Disparities in modes of transmission, language milieus, musical and religious milieus, social structures, and repertorial demands, as well as artistic intentions and aspirations account for the major differences. On the other hand, the style and repertoire of the klezmorim have served as the primary inspiration for the movement, and several leading musicians have apprenticed themselves to tradition bearers such as Dave Tarras (Andy Statman) and Max Epstein (Joel Rubin), so that one can also not speak of a complete rupture in the tradition.

The European klezmorim developed patterns of professionalism, virtuosity, flexibility, and eclecticism that would make it possible for them later to adapt easily to musical life on other continents through immigration, and it is this flexibility and eclecticism that has served as a model for the development of contemporary klezmer music by musicians of the revival. What tie all of this together musically are characteristic performance practice techniques, and typical modal and melodic patterns that are at the core of the klezmer tradition. Klezmer music makes use of a small number of modal scales with characteristic motifs, which contain elements of Ottoman Turkish modal scales known as makams, eastern Ashkenazic Jewish prayer modes known as shteygers or gusts, as well as Western major and minor scales. As they are employed in klezmer music, they function as a coherent and unique system.⁶⁷ More than anything else, perhaps, it is the manner in which klezmer tunes are ornamented and varied that forms the most characteristic aspect of the genre. It is the stereotypical sound of the ornaments, especially on instruments like violin and clarinet, with their characteristic note bends, trills, and grace notes, as well as the timbre of the instruments that make the music instantly recognizable as klezmer even to the untrained ear. In addition, klezmer music is traditionally heterophonic, and the basic texture along with the melodic conflicts and dissonances that may arise form a basic element of the sound of the music.⁶⁸