Talk:Klezmer

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 5 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dylan2269.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:50, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

[Untitled][edit]

Klezmer has become to mean more the contemporary renditions of old Hebrew/Jewish/Yiddish music, such as the music by that of Hasidic New Wave. I don't believe this should be merged.

Edit explained[edit]

I removed the following sentence. It struck me as a subjective judgement, not a statement of fact:

"Unlike rock, or African-influenced music, klezmer is made for dancing while holding hands, or dancing with a partner."

One might also argue that the idea of dancing "with a partner" is not quite what Ashkenazi dances were about. Hmoulding 15:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"vessel of song"[edit]

):P

כלי does not have to mean "vessel ". In this context, "instrument" would be a better translation. So - "instrument of song", or, even better, "musical instrument".

"Jewish Wedding" Link[edit]

"...especially wedding repertoire, since Jewish weddings would last several days..." It links to a Jewish wedding article, which does not exist and which I doubt will ever exist. Maybe it should link to wedding, even though at the time wedding does not have anything on Jewish weddings in particular. --Mr. Jenkins 02:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Links[edit]

I removed Rzeszow Klezmer Band - official website of Polish Klezmer Group from the list of external links because it's spam. The band isn't even widely known in Poland and has little to do with original klezmer tradition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.156.18.190 (talk) 11:55, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some more edits[edit]

I've gone over it and made some edits to some things that I feel were giving the wrong impression in this article. Plenty more things could be changed by someone trying to write a quality article, I guess, and for something like this where very little is known about historical times, a lot of it comes down to what someone happens to have read on the subject..

- I changed "Bulgarian music" to "Ukrainian music" since the latter had a lot more in common with klezmer as we know it (in terms of instrumentation and modes). I don't see how Bulgarian music has had any influence at all on klezmer aside from the word "Bulgar"?

-"Kleyzmurim" spelling: I'm not sure who put this, and it sounds right according to a certain way of pronouncing it, but I've only ever read it spelled "Klezmorim". This should at least be included as the first example since I've seen it in tons of books and scholarly articles and never any other way of spelling it.

-I added a sentence at the end of the first section saying that very little is known about the history of klezmer. I wasn't sure how to phrase this, but I think it's very important. An "overconfidant" article claiming everything as self-evident fact could give the wrong idea.

-I deleted the "cakewalk" from the list of dances. I'm not trying to be against American influences or whatever, but has this every been included in any serious list of traditional dances except as a novelty? Certainly, out of dozens of classic and revival cds, I can't name any cakewalk klezmer melody.

-I added in some bands performing klezmer using "traditional" instrumentation, since there are plenty of them today.

-I changed the word "original form" to "historic form". What would the original form be, in a tradition that is constantly changing due to new influences? I also deleted the last sentence about klezmorim being mocked for their tempos. Dan Carkner (talk) 22:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]


- I changed the introductory paragraph about modes to reflect the co-territorial influence more than the synagogue one. I think the cantorial modes were/are important for describing the different modes in klezmer, but many of them were originally picked up from eastern europe, not the middle east, and I think it's important to reflect this more honestly.

-I wrote in more detail in the repertoire section about the melodies themselves, not just how the repertoire was transmitted, which is all that was addressed previously. Also, I'm uncomfortable with the statement that all "20th century" (presumably revival, not pre-WWII??) was learned from fakebooks. this may be true in the current klezmer "scene", but there are still people who learn the music by ear, whether in eastern europe, israel, or in revival groups in north america or western europe. Dan Carkner (talk) 23:19, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]


The article as a whole is very weak on citations. Of course, a great deal of Bixing could be perpetrated with citations anyway, but certain published sources such as Slobin and Strom are fairly reliable, and at least statements within them can be traced back to an informed source. There's a fair amount of "what I thought I heard at Klez Kamp" or Balkan camp or on the world music mailing list "knowledge in here".

Dan has made some good points - especially about "learned from fakebooks". Even within the "revival" scene, a great deal of ear learning goes on. Many of the "Kamp" teachers insist on it.

However, there are Jewish Cakewalks - see Strom.

Dan's addition that "little is known" I think is arguable. There's a lot that's known, but it isn't necessarily what passes for knowledge in the romanticized oral histories ("bixing"); and a lot of this article is of that nature. Certainly what's known has its spottiness and is colored by strong opinion on the religious/secular question.

I would particularly challenge the idea that the sound owes more to co-territoriality than to the synagogue. My unsupported statement: it is usually easy to tell if a modern player has spent time in a traditional shul, because you will hear it in the music. The origins of the debate have a lot to do with the origins of the "revival", which for many people created an alternative to synagogue Judaism at a time when lesbians and gay men could not be out in almost any synagogue - a situation which has moderated but is still very real - and a time when the role distinctions made in synagogues left many women feeling disenfranchised - at a time when roles in the greater society were opening up.

I suggest that this is the reason for the frequent discounting of the role of the the liturgical music and the Shabbos table songs etc on klezmer and on Yiddish theater. However, any reasonable study of other folk musics in Western Ukraine (the outside influence I'm most familiar with) shows something in common but a great deal of difference - the modes are different and there is, very oddly, no known tunes in common. There are fragments, but even something like a kolomyika, where the basic form is identical reveals two entirely different results, in melody, harmony, and (apart from the time signature), the rhythm. You can't dance a Ukrainain kolomyika to a Jewish kolomyika.

That's my comments on Dan's additions - which I think on the whole are an improvement, aside from the co-territorial question.

The section on steygers is particularly troubling on many levels. One is the lack of attribution. Two is the apparent lifting of content from another site, but with some changes to words. It relies too much on comparison to other modes and scales - which the reader may not know - without offering a simple definition of the mode.

The statement that "most klezmer is in D Freygish" is bizarre. I'll grant the "D" - not as historical fact but as a modern reality in Kamp situaions - but almost everything is in Freygish?

Also the statement that most Hasidic music is in freygish is untrue - my original research shows most Hasidic music is in major.

The statement that Magen Avos is the mode of "Friday night prayers" is wrong. Magen Avos *is* the mode for a specific section of the Friday night ma'ariv - the "Magen Avos" prayer. The mode change is part of how the move from profane time to sacred time is made on Shabbos.

Tsimbler (talk) 02:04, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Thanks for your comments, I agree with pretty much everything you have written. I don't exactly know what to say about the "co-territorial" thing. I don't really disagree with what you have said. I just think it is almost always brought too far in the opposite direction from what I wrote-- like Yale Strom repeatedly writing that klezmer modes can be traced basically to ancient Israel?? which I don't believe. But you're right in terms of tone/feeling/etc, it has a lot to do with the vocal side of Judaism. Dan Carkner (talk) 03:15, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The "little is known" line seems very odd. I'm doing a paper on Klezmer now, and I have in my possesion: 1. Over a dozen large-scale, academically-oriented, peer-reviewed books in its history 2. Seven lengthy dissertations, all from major institutions 3. Dozens of articles from peer-reviewed journals I'm removing that line for now (if I can), as the evidence to the contrary is in large stacks all around me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.151.107.141 (talk) 05:58, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I still stand by my original edit.
""Suppose you were a researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Your starting point would be hundreds of thousands of recorded and notated examples of peasant folk songs. In fireproof closets you would have securely stowed the almost sacred tune transcriptions, dating back to the dawn of the twentieth century, penned by the legendary composer-analysts Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly. Or suppose you were in Bucharest, where I once (1974) met a team of returning ethnomusicologists who were following up the "Bartok singers" yet again, to track the evolution of the folk aesthetic over three generations. "Oh," one said pointing to a newly transcribed melody, "Maria ends that line differently." We have no such resources for klezmer. Long ago, tyrants and madmen destroyed or silenced the vast majority of the players. Across the huge expanse of the old klezmer territory, no one--save one herioc scholar in Kiev, Moshe Beregovski--organized extensive fieldwork or complied a substatial archive of the tunes. In the United States--not surprisingly, given the ideology of assimilation--no counterpart to Beregovski emergeed beyond the record producers of the commercial companies, who left us a legacy of 78 RPM recordings ignored by the academic world for decades. Only in the last few years has anyone thought to question retired musicians about the dried-up manuscripts in their attics. Until 1994 no one published a single series, well-researched article in English on the nature and evolution of the core klezmer repertoire, so Walter Zev Feldman's essay stands like a solitary oak in a field of scholarly silence."

-Mark Slobin, p.93, "Fiddler on the Move"

It may seem like there is a fair amount of information, but compared to almost any other folk genre, there is almost nothing, and what there is is quite recent and based on not very much information.Dan Carkner (talk) 17:04, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Songs[edit]

Should we have articles for individual songs? Oyfen Pripatchek, Bamir bist du shane...? Joe407 (talk) 06:17, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You mean Oyfn Pripetchek, Bei Mir Bistu Shein, no? Bar-abban (talk) 19:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Plagiarized sections of article[edit]

I noticed that the entire section on modes is lifted from this article by Josh Horowitz: [1] some of it was rephrased here or there, but pretty much every statement comes from that article. That's why I put a copyright tag on the section. I'll try working on it when I have some time..Dan Carkner (talk) 20:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Confusion between Romanian music and Roma music[edit]

In the article one can read that "The Roma influence is, perhaps, the strongest and most enduring of the musical styles that influenced traditional klezmer musicians. Klezmer musicians heard and adapted traditional Roma music, which is reflected in the dance forms found throughout surviving klezmer music repertoire (e.g., Horas, Doinas, Sirbas, and Bulgars etc.)". I edited "Roma" to "Romanian" but it seems that somebody does not agree with that and had reversed back to Roma. I wonder what is his/her argument. My point is that a) Romanian folklore (especially from the north-east) is very similar with Klezmer, b) Hora, Doina, Sirba are Romanian genres of music and c) if somebody follows the links to Hora, Doina or Sirba, he will find that these are related to Romanian music; hence this is another source of confusion between Romanians and Roma people. So, dear editor, could you please be so kind to provide some reference supporting the idea that Roma influence on klezmer is stronger than Romanian influence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.115.16.203 (talk) 22:48, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that this back-and-forth is still going on 8 years later. Let me be clear to any would-be-editors, it should say Romanian. The musicians playing the music may have been Romani in many cases but what is being discussed there is music from Romania specifically.--Dan Carkner (talk) 02:54, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gershwin[edit]

Let me start by saying that I know nothing about this subject. I only know there may currently be an invalid statement in the article. The article states: "Many believe Gershwin was influenced by the Yiddish of his youth, and that the opening of "Rhapsody in Blue" was a nod to klezmer clarinetting."
I was looking at an IP editor's edits and noticed this removal of the word "mistakenly" of the aforementioned sentence. The IP editor has made just two edits; the other edit is strange. I decided to look into the history of this article, because maybe "mistakenly" needs to be put back in.
The current ref was added here. The IP editor removed the word "mistakenly" before the ref was added. This seems to indicate the IP editor was right about removing the word "mistakenly". However, going further back, before someone added citation needed, a citation was removed that was added here when the text was put into the article. The original citation is also from a book and even though it's not possible to read the book via Google Books, it is possible to look up the citation and it's actually in the book.
So now the question is, which book is right? I didn't read the actual citations, but I decided to add this post on the Talk page to let you know that there may currently be an invalid statement in the article. --82.170.113.123 (talk) 19:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Pete Sokolow[edit]

Shouldn't he be mentioned?211.225.33.104 (talk) 23:07, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Vulekhl[edit]

When reading the book American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, I found that 'Vulekhl' is described as being similar to a doina rather than a freylekhs. What is the source for the 'Song types' section? I'd like to have a look. Biopsomu (talk) 22:10, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, now that I look at the book again, it uses that name for both forms (the dance form as "volekhl", but distinguishes it from a freylekhs. Confusing. Biopsomu (talk) 22:22, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to talk: Bibliography[edit]

Recently added. Looks like some may be useful as references: --Ronz (talk) 16:41, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Freedman, J. (2009). Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity. Columbia University Press.
  • Rogovoy, S. (2000). The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music, from the Old World to the Jazz Age to the Downtown Avant-garde. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonguin Books of Chapel Hill.
  • Sapoznik, H. (1999). Klezmer!: Jewish Music from Old World to our World. New York: Schirmer Books.
  • Slobin, M. (2000). Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Slobin, M., & Klezmer Research Conference. (2002). American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Strom, Y. (2002). The Book of Klezmer: The History, the Music, the Folklore. Chicago, Ill: A Cappella.
  • Strom, Y. (2012). Shpil: The Art of Playing Klezmer.
  • Waligórska, M. (2013). Klezmer's Afterlife: An Ethnography of the Jewish Music Revival in Poland and Germany. New York: Oxford University Press.

External links modified[edit]

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klezmer Israel Zohar - from Heb to En[edit]

good morning, I have an En translation to ישראל זוהר he asked me to put it in wiki, but I have no experience in EN content. is there any one who would like to do it? thank you very much, Refaella (talk) 06:37, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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I am planning to improve this article in collaboration with some scholars of klezmer in the coming weeks.[edit]

Hi folks who watch this page, I've been working on improving coverage of klezmer and Yiddish music topics on Wikipedia for the last year (see my sub-page where I have been trying to assess and group the coverage). During this process I've had several klezmer scholars and musicians contact me to mention how much the state of this main article bothers them (incorrect or irrelevant information, self-promotion, etc). I feel it is too much for me to fix on my own--I could go around deleting parts of it that I don't like, but it's a big topic and I don't think it should only reflect my views. But unfortunately not many klezmer scholars are familiar or comfortable with editing wikipedia. So I am going to collect some comments from some of those people and we will edit it in a session in about 3 weeks. Feel free to let me know here if you have any interest in being involved in this review.--Dan Carkner (talk) 03:05, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Will start making edits this weekend based on feedback I received and then will probably consult with how it looks and continue revising. Feel free to give me any feedback here too if you have it.--Dan Carkner (talk) 13:55, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Merge from Klezmer fiddle[edit]

The latter article heavily overlaps with Klezmer. Wait, what I am saying? In fact, there is close to no text about specifically fiddle. Loew Galitz (talk) 00:57, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly would support such a merger. The Klezmer fiddle article appears to have been changed a lot since I last saw it a year ago - but in a way that made it just a retread of the subject covered by the Klezmer article itself. --Dan Carkner (talk) 01:07, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just to add - actually, it hasn't been changed a lot in the past year, I must be mixing it up with something else. But still support the merge. --Dan Carkner (talk) 01:11, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This has been sitting around for a while, is there some kind of timeframe where these things are usually put in motion? I would do it myself but I wrote most of this Klezmer article so it feels like a conflict of interest. --Dan Carkner (talk) 01:32, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Dan Carkner I think you can go and merge it if you're willing to - I don't think it'll be a COI, and without somebody actually doing that merge this discussion wouldn't lead to anything. With 5 supports (4 + nom) and no opposes it's pretty safe and non-controversial thing to do. Artem.G (talk) 16:15, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, will look into what can be merged/salvaged from the fiddle article, thanks. --Dan Carkner (talk) 19:22, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I support such a merge as well. newmila (talk) 15:13, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Loew Galitz, support from me also. Klezmer fiddle is basically the same article, but poorly sourced, I don't even know what should be merged and what just removed. Artem.G (talk) 09:19, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. In fact, giving a cursory glance, I see little that can be salvaged that isn't already redundant and/or unsourced, and would support just straight redirecting it to this article with no actual merger of content. oknazevad (talk) 10:37, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discography, please![edit]

So much information on Klezmer music, but no pointers to some media examples, namely LPs or CDs, that one could buy or search for at a library. Very disappointing that the article lacks this.Dogru144 (talk) 08:25, 18 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

yyyoungcut & klezmer music.[edit]

This Yiddish artist,composer, producer,and artist have use his Jewish traditions in the new wave of today ,in order that people understand the old traditions. 150.195.37.108 (talk) 08:44, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not every artist inspired by the genre should be in the Wikipedia article. It would become far too long, not to mention issues of notability. Dan Carkner (talk) 07:33, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Suggesting merge from Dreydlekh[edit]

Sorry, I put a merge template on Dreydlekh to be combined into the Style subsection here at Klezmer. The article at Dreydlekh seems to duplicate some of the info here but with lower quality citations. Dan Carkner (talk) 14:41, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support merge - better to have one good and well-sourced article than several bad ones. Besides, dreydlekh seems to be not notable as a single topic, but only within klezmer. Artem.G (talk) 16:20, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  checkY Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 15:04, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology[edit]

I cannot provide any sources, however, I note that the etymology of "Klezmer" could also very easily come from the Yiddish words kleyn tsimer (small room). If so, could it be that the word effectively means something like Zimmermusik (salon or chamber music) from Old/High German? Rutthe2 (talk) 15:37, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I like the concept of it, but isn't the etymology well established in literature already, coming from a Hebrew origin כּלי־זמר and not a Germanic one? Including proposed other etymologies in the article without any basis in secondary works would go against Wikipedia's rules about original research. Dan Carkner (talk) 01:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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