The traditional instrumental music of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries known as Klezmer was brought by immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries to America, where it continued to develop and to influence American jazz and swing styles,and where it is enjoying a renaissance today.

It is not "popular" music in the modern sense,"inspired" by traditional Jewish themes -- it is the popular music of a hundred and two hundred years ago, in its original form. And it is also a dynamic contemporary process of music-making.

The old world klezmorim didn't perform exclusively within the Jewish community. They were itinerant, work-a-day musicians, and they probably played any job they could get. Surrounded as all Jewish settlements in Europe were by other cultures, their musicians were not only influenced by, but were active players in and contributors to those cultures.

For the contemporary klezmer, it is just as legitimate,just as authentic to pursue that process in the modern context -- absorbing, adapting, sometimes embracing numerous exogenous source materials, while working from a centrally Yiddish perspective -- as it is to simply revive the fruits of that process from a century or two centuries ago.

The bottom line is that Klezmer is participatory music. It is musicians sitting down together with their instruments and playing. It is ensemble playing for dancers, for festivals, for joyous events, and for its own sake. It is straightforward and direct in its communication, even in its most elaborate expressions, because it comes not only from the soul, but also from the earth.

-- Marc Glickman, Klezmos