Klezmer Music in the Context of East European Musical Culture

The repertoire and social role of the klezmer musician in Eastern Europe can be best appreciated within the context of the broader “traditional” musical life of East European Jews. From the early seventeenth century onward the emphasis on the “Jewishness” and halakhic validity of all aspects of life now became fixed and part of local custom (minhag). This merging of the sacred and the secular came to affect music and dance just as it did costume, through the internal action of the Jewish community, not pressure from external sources. The instrumental klezmer music and the accompanying profession of badkhones (wedding orator) displayed both the fusion of the religious and secular in Jewish life, and a continuing tension between secular and religious allusions, moods, and techniques. The “Jewishness” in musical style – especially in instrumental klezmer music but also in Hasidic niggunim and to some extent in Yiddish song – grew by a process of cultural differentiation.This process involved both the preservation and development of ancient features, and the reinterpretation of borrowed musical material to suit principles alien to the original source.This chapter briefly characterizes the system of repertoires and genres of the East European Jews, beginning with the music of prayer, through the various paraliturgical songs, to the music of Hasidism, and the many sub-genres of religious, secular and professional song in the Yiddish language. The chapter concludes with a presentation of the two established musical professionals in traditional East European Jewish life – the khazn (cantor) and the klezmer.