From the Bronx to the Bosphorus: Klezmer and Other Displaced Musics of New York

Musician Feldman (Klezmer) delivers an affectionate chronicle of his lifelong exploration of neglected Jewish, European, and Middle Eastern music. Raised by a father from Bessarabia (a historical part of Eastern Europe that’s now mostly in Moldova), the author grew up in the Bronx imbibing the melodies of his dad’s synagogue and playing the darabukka, a Middle Eastern drum. After discovering Greek and Armenian nightclubs in his teenage years, he began connecting with musicians who played regional instruments like the santouri and lauto. Those influences primed him to team up with musician Andy Statman in the late 1970s to revive klezmer—a Jewish instrumental folk music with Roma, Moldovan, Turkish, and Greek influences that was almost wholly out of fashion in the U.S. The pair drew from “living masters, old recordings, and a few old notations” to reimagine the music without the Americanized “Yinglish”-inflected nostalgia it had become saturated with. In so doing, they helped spark the late ’70s and ’80s revival of klezmer. Interspersing the narrative with brief profiles of such musical influences as santouri player Paul Limberis, Feldman teases out the historical roots of klezmer and elucidates the challenges of retaining Jewish tradition in America. It’s a granular, informative look at a life spent preserving a vanishing musical history. (June)