Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
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—also sometimes known by the earlier term freilach music —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 music of Hawaii includes an array of traditional and popular styles, ranging from native Hawaiian folk music to modern rock and hip hop. Styles like slack-key guitar are well known worldwide, while Hawaiian-tinged music is a frequent part of Hollywood soundtracks. Hawaii also made a contribution to country music with the introduction of the steel guitar. In addition, the music which began to be played by Puerto Ricans in Hawaii in the early 1900s is called cachi cachi music, on the islands of Hawaii.
Germany claims some of the most renowned composers, singers, producers and performers of the world. Germany is the largest music market in Europe, and third largest in the world.
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator. His career includes more than fifty recordings as a leader and more than 500 published compositions. His ensembles include the Dave Douglas Quintet; Sound Prints, a quintet co-led with saxophonist Joe Lovano; Uplift, a sextet with bassist Bill Laswell; Present Joys with pianist Uri Caine and Andrew Cyrille; High Risk, an electronic ensemble with Shigeto, Jonathan Aaron, and Ian Chang; and Engage, a sextet with Jeff Parker, Tomeka Reid, Anna Webber, Nick Dunston, and Kate Gentile.
Budapest has long been an important part of the music of Hungary. Its music history has included the composers Franz Liszt, Ernő Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók and the opera composer Ferenc Erkel.
The Klezmorim, founded in Berkeley, California, in 1975, was the world's first klezmer revival band, widely credited with spearheading the global renaissance of klezmer in the 1970s and 1980s. Initially featuring flute and strings—notably the exotic fiddling of co-founder David Skuse—the ensemble reorganized into a "loose, roaring, funky" brass/reed/percussion band fronted by co-founder Lev Liberman's saxophones and founding member David Julian Gray's clarinets. As a professional performing and recording ensemble focused on recreating the lost sounds of early 20th century klezmer bands, The Klezmorim achieved crossover success, garnering a Grammy nomination in 1982 for their album Metropolis and selling out major concert venues across North America and Europe, including Carnegie Hall and L'Olympia in Paris. The band performed steadily until 1993, regrouping in 2004 for a European tour.
David Krakauer is an American clarinetist who performs klezmer, jazz, classical music, and avant-garde improvisation.
For the purposes of this article, “contemporary” refers to the period from 1967 to the present day, “Jewish” refers to the various streams and traits of Judaism practiced. Many Orthodox Jews use the term “religious” to refer to a strict adherence to Jewish law. For the purposes of this article, “religious” refers to the content and context of the music itself: liturgical or implicit references to the divine.
An overview of the evolution of Jazz music in Germany reveals that the development of jazz in Germany and its public notice differ from the "motherland" of jazz, the US, in several respects.
Kolsimcha – The World Quintet is a Swiss klezmer band.
Brian Choper is an American percussionist, band manager, and author. He has more than 30 years of experience playing both nationally and internationally, has been featured on nine CD's, authored an educational book on music management, and started his own entertainment management company, Washington's Entertainment Connection/Bigshot Records.
Dixieland jazz, also referred to as traditional jazz, hot jazz, or simply Dixieland, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The 1917 recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, fostered awareness of this new style of music.
Mames Babegenush is a Danish Klezmer band formed in 2004 in Copenhagen.
Mames Babegenush is the East meeting the North. Strong Scandinavian roots merging with the vibrant dance music of Eastern Europe. From the great ambience of Nordic pine trees to lively weddings in Romania the music of Mames Babegenush gives a sense of both melancholy and ecstatic joy. In the beginning doing quite traditional klezmer music—with inspiration from artists such as Naftule Brandwein, Abe Schwartz and Dave Tarras—but has increasingly developed their own sound.
East Meets East is a collaborative studio album released through EMI Classics in 2003 by violinist Nigel Kennedy and the Kroke band, surrounded by several guest artists of international reputation such as Natacha Atlas, Mo Foster, and the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra.
Dominick Farinacci is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He is currently signed to the Mack Avenue label. Farinacci was one of eighteen artists worldwide invited to be a part of the inaugural class of the Jazz Studies Program at The Juilliard School. Farinacci has won the "International New Star Award", Disney's "New Star Award", and topped the charts as one of Japan's No. 1 jazz musicians.
Yoshie Fruchter is an American experimental jazz guitarist, bassist, oud player and composer.
Sam Musiker (1916–1964) was an American clarinetist and saxophonist whose career spanned both jazz and klezmer music. He is best known as the musical director of the album Tanz which also featured his brother Ray Musiker and his father-in-law Dave Tarras.
Orthodox pop, sometimes called Hasidic pop, Hasidic rock, K-pop, Haredi pop, and Ortho-pop, is a form of contemporary Jewish religious music popular among Orthodox Jews. It typically draws stylistically from contemporary genres like pop, rock, jazz, and dance music, while incorporating text from Jewish prayer, Torah, and Talmud as well as traditional Jewish songs and occasional original English lyrics with themes of faith and positivity. The genre was pioneered in the 1970s by artists like Mordechai Ben David and the Miami Boys Choir, who incorporated secular pop and dance influences into their music in contrast to the more traditional Jewish music of the time, and has had continued success in the modern era with singers like Yaakov Shwekey, Lipa Schmeltzer, Baruch Levine, and Benny Friedman.
Breslov Bar Band is an American experimental klezmer band based in Brooklyn, New York. Formed in 2009 by bandleader Binyomin Ginzberg, the band has released three albums, Have No Fear (2010), Happy Hour (2013), and Holy Chutzpah (2022). They are noted for their experimental interpretations of traditional Breslov nigunim.
