American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots

by Mark Slobin

Klezmer, the Yiddish word for a folk instrumental musician, has come to mean a person, a style, and a scene. This musical subculture came to the United States with the late-nineteenth-century Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Although it had declined in popularity by the middle of the twentieth century, this lively music is now enjoying recognition among music fans of all stripes. Today, klezmer flourishes in the United States and abroad in the world music and accompany Jewish celebrations. The outstanding essays collected in this volume investigate American its roots, its evolution, and its spirited revitalization.

The contributors to American Klezmer include every kind of authority on the subject--from academics to leading musicians--and they offer a wide range of perspectives on the musical, social, and cultural history of klezmer in American life. The first half of this volume concentrates on the early history of klezmer, using folkloric sources, records of early musicians unions, and interviews with the last of the immigrant musicians. The second part of the collection examines the klezmer "revival" that began in the 1970s. Several of these essays were written by the leaders of this movement, or draw on interviews with them, and give firsthand accounts of how klezmer is transmitted and how its practitioners maintain a balance between preservation and innovation.

Genres: Music

268 pages, Paperback

First published December 3, 2001

About the author

Mark Slobin was a professor at Wesleyan University for 45 years in its renowned ethnomusicology program.
He wrote books on music in Afghanistan and Central Asia, the Eastern European Jews (immigrants, cantors, klezmer), 2 of which won the prestigious ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, global film music, and folk music.
A native Detroiter, he has written the first-ever survey of a major American city's musics, from the European, Appalachian, and African American immigrants to the worlds of classical music, the auto industry, the unions, the counterculture, and the media. His own memoirs and his family's music set the tone for the writing of "Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back," published by Oxford University Press in November, 2018.