A very brief history of Klezmer Follow The JC on Twitter Klezmer
as we now know it was originally just referred to as Jewish
music and was played by Jewish musicians in Eastern Europe for
several hundred years prior to the Second World War. After the
Russian pogroms, many klezmer musicians (or klezmorim) fled to
America, and there, from about 1910, klezmer began to flourish.
After the 1940s, however, the music almost totally died out -
devastated in Europe by the death of so many Jewish musicians in
the Holocaust, and unable to fight off the rival claims of the
folk music emerging from the newly created state of Israel.
Klezmer was relegated to a few isolated moments at weddings and
barmitzvahs. The revival started in the late 1970s, led by
several outstanding American musicians keen to explore the music
of their roots. An upsurge of interest followed in this country,
catalysed in 200 by the introduction of KlezFest music festival.
Prominent among the groups that emerged were Oi Va Voi and the
Sophie Solomon