the.com/klezmer
music that makes a clarinet laugh, sob, and elbow you in the same breath
means A style of festive, expressive Jewish folk music—traditionally played by ensembles featuring clarinet, violin, and accordion—rooted in the Ashkenazi communities of Eastern Europe.
from From Yiddish klezmer, itself a squeezing-together of two Hebrew words: kli (vessel or instrument) and zemer (song or melody)—literally a 'vessel of song.' At first it named the musician rather than the music: a klezmer was the player you hired for a wedding. Only later, especially in 20th-century America, did the word slide over to mean the music itself. The plural, fittingly tangled, is klezmorim.
- origin
- Yiddish folk tradition of Eastern European Jewish weddings
- the laugh
- clarinet bends notes to mimic human crying and giggling
- the word
- fuses Hebrew kli zemer, meaning vessel of song
- comeback
- nearly vanished, then roared back in 1970s America
- the players
- klezmorim once ranked low, near beggars and thieves
the klezmatics — grammy-winning klezmer band from new york formed in 1987
klezmer fest safed israel — annual music festival in northern israel celebrating klezmer culture since 1994