Ashkenazi Music

Ashkenazi music is the musical heritage of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, an umbrella spanning three intertwined repertories: klezmer, the instrumental dance and celebration music of the wedding band (kapelye); the Yiddish song tradition of folk ballad, theatre and art song; and khazones, the cantorial art of improvised liturgical singing. Clarinet, fiddle, tsimbl and brass carry melodies drawn from synagogue modes, Romanian, Ukrainian and Roma sources, shaped by the badkhn, the wedding jester who mediated the celebration. Preserved on early recordings, destroyed in Europe by the Holocaust, the tradition was revived from the 1970s as a living world music.