Jewish Music

Jewish music is the umbrella term for the musical traditions of Jewish communities worldwide: Ashkenazi klezmer and Yiddish song, Sephardic romances sung in Ladino, Mizrahi and Yemenite repertories, cantorial chant and Hasidic nigunim. Klezmer, its best-known instrumental branch, is led by clarinet or violin over tsimbl, accordion and brass, playing freylekhs, horas and bulgars for weddings and dances. Sephardic song preserves medieval Iberian balladry in archaic Spanish. What unites these repertories is liturgical and life-cycle function, diaspora transmission, and modal systems — freygish in the Ashkenazi sphere — distinct from the musics of surrounding host cultures.