Monthly Archives: November 2002

Der Kukvinkl

Zimriyah

A Celebration of Jewish Music.

(This choral music article appears by permission of the World Zionist Organization. It first appeared on their website Hagshama.)

By: Ilene Bloch

Jews are a people of the Book as much as we are a people of the Note. The Musical Note, that is. We can trace the first Jewish choral work to Biblical times, where the entire nation made their choral debut in a paean to God for saving them from the hands of the pursuing Egyptians.

“My victory and song is G-d, that was my salvation.”
Ch. 15, verses 1-2, Shemot.

That can certainly help to explain the waves of passion and excitement that filled Tel Aviv’s Mann Auditorium during the Zimriya¹s, the world assembly of choirs, 50-year jubilee concert celebration that took place last month.…
CONTINUE READING >

Book and Score Reviews

The Book of Klezmer: The History, The Music, The Folklore

By Yale Strom

Yale Strom has written a book with enormous effort that supplies the reader with good access to extensive quotations by klezmer musicians, translations of previous scholarly works into English, 3 superb appendices, a bibliography, a very nice discography and an index. The purpose of the book is to give an overall history of klezmer music, with its growth in Eastern Europe and a look at the current scene and it’s meaning today.

Strom spent several years researching the material, conducting interviews of klezmer musicians in America and Europe, and having materials translated into English. Over a twenty-year period, he made some fifty trips to Eastern Europe doing ethnographic research. Details supplied by photographic plates and the extensive quotations from his interviews abound in the book.

A highlight of special note in this book is Appendix 1, “Klezmer Zikhroynes in di Yizker Bikher,” (Klezmer remembrances in the Memorial Books).…
CONTINUE READING >