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Klezmer is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker.
The Workers Circle or Der Arbeter Ring, formerly the Workmen's Circle, is an American Jewish nonprofit organization that promotes social and economic justice, Jewish community and education, including Yiddish studies, and Ashkenazic culture. It operates schools and Yiddish education programs, and year-round programs of concerts, lectures and secular holiday celebrations. The organization has community branch offices throughout North America, a national headquarters in New York City and approximately 11,000 members nationwide. It owns and operates a summer camp located in Hopewell Junction, New York called Camp Kinder Ring. It also runs an adult vacation campground facility, Circle Lodge, with bungalows and cottages, and a healthcare center in Bronx, New York.
The Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków is an annual cultural event organized since 1988 in the once Jewish district of Kazimierz by the Jewish Culture Festival Society headed by Janusz Makuch, a self-described meshugeneh, fascinated with all things Jewish. The main goal of the festival is to educate people about Jewish culture, history and faith (Judaism), which flourished in Poland before the Holocaust, as well as to familiarize them with modern Jewish culture developing mostly in the United States and Israel, and finally, to provide entertainment.
The Flying Bulgars is a Canadian folk music band, who play original music rooted in the folk and celebration music of Jews originating in Eastern Europe. The band's music adds elements of rock, jazz and salsa.
Henry "Hank" Sapoznik is an American author, record and radio producer and performer of traditional Yiddish and American music.
Budapest is the capital and largest city of Hungary; it has long been an important part of the music of Hungary. Budapest's music history has included the composers Franz Liszt, Ernő Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók and the opera composer Ferenc Erkel.
KlezKamp was a yearly Klezmer music and Yiddish culture festival in New York State.
Alan Bern is an American composer, pianist, accordionist, educator and cultural activist, based in Berlin since 1987. He is the founding artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar and the Other Music Academy (OMA). He is internationally recognized for his contributions to the research, dissemination and creative renewal of Jewish music with Brave Old World, The Other Europeans and the Semer Ensemble, among others. He is the creator of Present-Time Composition, a musical and educational approach informed by cognitive science that integrates the methods of improvisation and composition. In 2016 he received the Weimar Prize in recognition of major cultural contributions to the city of Weimar.
Beyond the Pale is a Toronto-based Canadian world/roots fusion band. Their style is rooted in klezmer, Balkan and Romanian music but heavily accented with contemporary and North American styles including bluegrass, jazz, reggae, funk and classical chamber music. They are known for unique songcraft, virtuosic musicianship, meticulous dynamics, and exuberant live performances. They are widely regarded as one of Canada's most accomplished and innovative acoustic ensembles. Some have described their sound as being in the same spirit as "New Acoustic Music" and David Grisman's "Dawg" music, but tinged more heavily with an east European accent. The name of the band is a reference to the Eastern-European Jewish Pale of Settlement, from where their music is partially inspired.
The Koffler Centre of the Arts is a broad-based cultural institution established in 1977 by Murray and Marvelle Koffler and based at Artscape Youngplace in the West Queen West area of downtown Toronto, Ontario.
The Kharkov Klezmer Band, also known as the Kharkiv Klezmer Band, is a klezmer band from Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Michael Alpert is a klezmer musician and Yiddish singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, scholar and educator who has been called a key figure in the klezmer revitalization of the 1970s and 1980s. He has played in a number of groups since that time, including The An-Sky Ensemble, Brave Old World, Khevrisa, Kapelye, The Brothers Nazaroff and Voices of Ashkenaz, and collaborated with clarinetist David Krakauer, hip-hop artist Socalled, singer/songwriter Daniel Kahn and bandurist Julian Kytasty. Alpert is also a pioneering teacher and researcher of Yiddish traditional dance and has been central to restoring Yiddish dance to its time-honored place alongside klezmer music as a key component of East European Jewish expressive culture. He is the recipient of a 2015 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States government's highest lifetime honor to its folk and traditional artists. Alpert continues to perform and teach worldwide from his home in Scotland.
The Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD) is a leading folk/traditional arts organization based in New York City. Originally established as the Balkan Arts Center in 1968, CTMD assists the city's ethnic and immigrant communities in maintaining their traditions and cultural heritage. CTMD has developed a range of programs that emphasize research, documentation, collaboration, presentation, and education to help advance its mission of cultural equity. Over the past four decades, CTMD’s programs have led to the creation of nationally renowned ensembles, folk arts festivals, and community-based cultural organizations. CTMD provides the public with a full calendar of events designed to showcase and promote the diversity of New York City's performing arts traditions.
Vira Lozinsky is an Israeli-Moldovan musician and Yiddish language singer.
The Tirgan Festival is a biennial four-day celebration of Iranian arts and culture held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Festival celebrates Iranian arts and culture through an array of artistic and literary disciplines including music, dance, cinema, theatre, history, literature and visual arts. The festivals are held in multiple locations in Toronto, such as the Harbourfront Centre, the Distillery District, and St. Lawrence Center for the Arts. Tirgan Festival 2019 accommodated over 250 artists, 140 performances, and professional speakers.
The Ashkenaz is a live music and dance venue located in Berkeley, California in the United States. It is a non-profit organization. It focuses on world music. In 2011 it was voted the best place to dance by readers of East Bay Express.
Yiddishkayt is a Yiddish cultural and educational organization, based in Los Angeles, California. Its offices are located in the Pellissier Building above the Wiltern Theater in the Koreatown District of Los Angeles. Its name refers to the cultural concept of yiddishkayt,, which the American Jewish critic Irving Howe described not in religious terms, but rather as a humanism based in a "readiness to live...beyond the clamor of self." According to the Yiddishkayt website, the organization seeks to "inspire current and future generations with the artists, writers, musicians, performers, filmmakers, philosophers, and social justice activists whose yiddishkayt — their particular form of critical and compassionate engagement with humanity — emerged from the Jewish communities of Europe as they developed in constant contact with their non-Jewish neighbors."
Jewish hip hop is a genre of hip hop music with thematic, stylistic, or cultural ties to Judaism and its musical traditions.
One of the foremost scholars of Jewish music, Neil W. Levin is a Professor Emeritus of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and since 1993 has served as the Artistic Director of the Milken Archive of Jewish Music. Levin has studied the music of Jewish experience from historical, musicological, ethnological, Judaic, and cross-cultural perspectives. His areas of focus embrace comparative considerations of eastern and western spheres of Ashkenazi Jewry in terms of their sacred, secular art, theatrical, and folk music; and the musical creativity and life of American Jewry. As a professor of Jewish music on the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York since 1982, he teaches graduate courses on the history, development, and repertoire of synagogue music, cantorial art, Yiddish and Hebrew folksong, the music of modern Israel, and music of American Jewish experience. He is recognized as one of the leading authorities in the field of Jewish music in general, and he is in much demand as a lecturer and presenter at university seminars and academic conferences throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel.
KlezKanada is a Canadian organization for the promotion of klezmer music and Yiddish culture. Its principal program is a week-long Jewish music festival founded in 1996 that takes place annually in August at Camp B'nai B'rith in Lantier, Quebec. The organization also hosts workshops, concerts, and other educational programs in Montreal throughout the year.
References
- ↑ "The Ashkenaz Festival". Janis Seftel 12/26/2012
- 1 2 "Ashkenaz fest takes Jewish culture global". Toronto Star, Jasmine Kabatay, Sept. 5, 2016
- ↑ "Klezmer artist launches CD with new sound". Canadian Jewish News, Ruth Schweitzer, 24 November 2016