HERE'S A BISL SHPIEL ON KLEZMER MUSIC:

Klezmer, as a description of a musical genre, is of recent coinage. In
Europe the appelation(though not the music) was sometimers regarded as a
bit of an insult, intimating rough musicianship and lifestyle.
With the passing of the generation of the people who lived the life that
created this music, the meaning of the term, almost simultaneous with it's
introduction, became obscure. The expression has sometimes incorrectly
been used to include Yiddish folk songs, Yiddish theater music and work
songs as well as experimental music fusions. Klezmer has nothing
whatsoever to do with Sunrise, Sunset !

The explanation, like all things Jewish, is subject to heated debate.
There is no argument that it comes from the Hebrew words kley zemer,
meaning musical instrument. Klezmer is an instrumental form, significant
in Jewish life because musical instruments have been banned from the
synagogue since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. Klezmer in
Yiddish, however, means musician, and in English, it has come to describe
the genre of music itself.

Klezmer took on some of the style of the music of surrounding cultures in
Central and Eastern Europe, and continued to do the same in The U.S. The
influences include Russian, Ukrainian, Bessarabaian, Romanian, and German
folk musics as well as Western art and popular music. All this is leavened
with a Middle-Eastern sensibility derived partially from the music of the
Ottoman empire, but also from an unbroken stream of liturgical music
stretching back to biblical times in the Land of Israel. Through all the assimilation,
klezmer was unmistakably a Jewish music, easily identified as such by
people familiar with related genres.

It was originally associated with certain elements of Central and Eastern
European Jewry, but not with synagogue music. During klezmer's formative
years, the Turks had hegemony over much of East and Central Europe. The
Mid-Eastern style of the Jewish religious melodies, specifically the
cantillation of he torah and other biblical literature, did at least
predispose Jews to Turkish influenced styles. Being text driven, these
cantillations are often arrhythmic. Other "Oriental" influences are the
absence (until relatively recently) of harmony and rarity of long "pure"
tones. Instead notes are usually surrounded with graces, trills, chirps,
crying effects, glissandi, etc.

In the 19th Century, the primary klezmer instruments were violin, cymbalom,and bass. It wasn't until the end of the 19th Century that the clarinet began to take a lead role and brass instruments and drums fell into common usage. The world, in general, was getting louder. Also, many of the Jews that managed to survive their forced military conscription, returned with a knowledge of marching band instruments. In 1888 There was a riot in the city of Khotin in Bessarabia, in which the local fiddler's guild protested the encroachment of these new wind instruments. An effigy of a drunk trumpet player was erected and abused and jokes about wind players were heard late into the night. The demonstration was eventually squelched when a large pot of schav (sorrel leaf soup) was sent by the influential furrier's guild, who feared the commotion was bad for business. One of the protest signs is preserved in the collection of the musicologist Martin Schwartz which reads, "Wine, Not Vodka! The Fiddle is King! Sing, Don't Honk! -Union of Khotiner Fiddlers"

OK, so maybe I embellished that story just a little...

Jews started arriving to the New World in great waves of immigration, escaping the pogroms
of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and brought their folk
music with them. Klezmer was only one of the styles that interested these
first generation Americans (mostly in NY City). There were Yiddish
language folk songs, recordings of cantorial virtuosi, and the music of the
Yiddish theater (as well as American sounds). But none have enjoyed
anything like the renaissance of klezmer music.

With the destruction of European Jewish communities in the Second World
War, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Things Yiddish
began to be replaced with things Hebrew, which represented the hope for a
Jewish future, and klezmer music slowly faded into the memories of the
pre-war generation. It was also shunned by second generation Jews who saw
it as old fashioned and even embarrasing. This generation strove for more
american pursuits like jazz, baseball, and cheeseburgers.(!)

In the late 1970's, however, bands began to form with young members in
across America, and especially in Berkeley, California. A band called The
Klezmorim brought a new energy and modern sensibility to klezmer, touring
Europe, playing Carnegie Hall, and exposing klezmer to a new generation of
Jews who had been raised on Led Zepplin and The Who. The how and why (not
The Who) of the movement can, as usual, be debated. Marc Slobin, one of
the current academic experts on the subject, suggests that when Jews
reached an "unconscious but critical level of acceptance" in The U.S.,
klezmer was reinvented. Before that it was not a generally accepted
"ethnic" symbol like Irish fiddling or the blues.

Adapted from Stacey Phillips' intro to the Mel
Bay klezmer fake book