You can hear it in the hottest clubs in New York, the hippest rooms in New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco, and in top concert halls around the world. It's a joyous sound that echoes the past. It's Old World meets New World. It's secular and sacred. It's traditional and experimental. It's played by classical violinist Itzhak Perlman (his all-klezmer album in his all-time best-seller!), the hypno-pop band Yo La Tengo, and avant-gardist John Zorn. It made the late great Benny Goodman's clarinet wail. It's klezmer and it's hot!
The Essential Klezmer is the definitive introduction to a musical form in the midst of a renaissance. It documents the history of klezmer from its roots in the Jewish communities of medieval Eastern Europe to its current revival in Europe and America. It includes detailed information about the music's social, cultural, and political roots as well as vivid descriptions of the instruments, their unique sounds, and the players who've kept those sounds alive through the ages. Music journalist Seth Rogovoy skillfully conveys the emotional intensity and uplifting power of klezmer and the reasons for its ever widening popularity among Jews and Gentiles, Hasidim and club kids, grandparents and their grandkids.
A comprehensive discography presents the "Essential Klezmer Library," extensive lists of recordings, artists, and styles, as well as an up-to-the-minute resource of music retailers, festivals, workshops, and klezmer Web sites.
The Essential Klezmer is as entertaining as it is enlightening.
Rogovoy, a music journalist and passionate aficionado of klezmer music, carefully and lovingly chronicles klezmer with a journalist's eye for detail. (The term klezmer is a Yiddish contraction of two Hebrew words: kley, or "vessel," and "zemer," or song. Thus, klezmer originally referred to a Jewish folk or street musicianDa vessel of songDand not to a specific style.) Once in America, the genre absorbed influences of Broadway, jazz, blues, funk, and, most recently, a hard-driving rock beat (leading to the recent incarnation of shtetl-metal music). The five chapters deal with chronology, from "Old World Klezmer" through "Revival" and "Renaissance" (the latter looks at the phenomenon of klezmer music in the 1990s). The author is thorough and up-to-the-minute: the last appendixD"Klezmer on the Internet"Dlists websites of the major artists and organizations that perform and promote klezmer music. His discography, as well, is a valuable tool for both novices and seasoned listeners. Highly recommended for all collections.DLarry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, PA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
SETH ROGOVOY is a writer, award-winning critic, book author, lecturer, teacher, musician, and radio commentator.
Seth's BOB DYLAN: Prophet, Mystic, Poet is a full-length analysis of Bob Dylan's life and work.
Seth has taught a variety of college-level and adult-ed courses on klezmer, Jewish music, and Bob Dylan, about whom he has written extensively.
Seth is the author of THE ESSENTIAL KLEZMER: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music (Algonquin Books, 2000), the all-time bestselling guide to klezmer music. Since his book was published, Seth has continued to write, teach, and lecture extensively about klezmer. His live, one-man, multimedia program about klezmer, ROCKIN' THE SHTETL, has been presented at universities, JCCs, museums, cultural centers, and synagogues across the U.S. and in England.
Seth is editor-in-chief of BERKSHIRE LIVING, an award-winning regional lifestyle and culture magazine serving the greater Berkshire region of western Massachusetts, southwestern Vermont, eastern New York, and northwestern Connecticut. He is also editor-in-chief of Berkshire Living's spinoff publications, including BBQ: Berkshire Business Quarterly and Berkshire Living Home+Garden.
Seth frequently writes about Jewish music and culture for publications including FORWARD, HADASSAH Magazine, and the BERKSHIRE JEWISH VOICE.
For nearly twenty years, Seth was a rock and jazz critic, primarily for the BERKSHIRE EAGLE, and also for dozens of other newspapers and magazines.
Seth's cultural journalism has appeared in newspapers and magazines including NEWSDAY, the BOSTON PHOENIX, HAARETZ, the WOODSTOCK (N.Y.) TIMES, the BENNINGTON (Vt.) BANNER, EDUTOPIA, GASTRONOMICA, MOMENT, LEAK CD magazine, AUDITION, the BLACK AND WHITE CITY PAPER of Birmingham, Ala., and others.
Seth is also a singer-guitarist and leader of several bands, including the Rolling Rogovoy Revue and Seth Rogovoy and the Grove Street Band. He frequently performs at Bob Dylan tribute concerts throughout the Northeast United States. A graduate of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., where he has taught courses on Dylan and klezmer, Seth lives in Great Barrington, Mass.
Seth's weekly cultural commentary can be heard on WAMC NORTHEAST PUBLIC RADIO NETWORK (www.wamc.org) on Fridays between 12:30 and 1 p.m., and he is the official film blogger for the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington.
Seth served two terms as a member of the Board of Selectmen in Pownal, Vt., and is a past president of a food co-op and a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in Williamstown, Mass. Seth was the founder and lay leader of the South Berkshire Minyan, a traditional Jewish prayer group, based at a shtibl in Great Barrington, Mass., from 2003 to 2006.
This review is from: The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music, from the Old World to the Jazz Age to the Downtown Avant Garde (Paperback)
I'm not entirely unbiased -- Seth has generously praised my most recent book -- but as someone who writes on Jewish music regularly for several papers, I can honestly say that this is the book on klezmer to start with. Seth's ecumenical, eclectic taste and balanced view of the current scene make him a superb tour guide for either a first-time visitor or an old klezmer hand. As a working music journalist, he has interviewed all the key figures in this music -- even the notoriously reclusive John Zorn -- and clearly he has asked the right questions, because his chapters on recent music are insightful and zesty. And the book's lengthy critical discography makes it an indispensable guide for the listener and record buyer.
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5.0 out of 5 starsRogovoy Gets it Right, June 3, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music, from the Old World to the Jazz Age to the Downtown Avant Garde (Paperback)
Seth Rogovoy has written a rich history of Klezmer music that should prove to be an important contribution to the field of Jewish music. He has captured the spirit and meaning of this most wonderful and expressive musical traditon that is currently in the midst of a significant rebirth. This is an intelligent and loving tribute both to the musical tradition, and to the men and women who have performed Klezmer from generation to generation.
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5.0 out of 5 starsKlezmer in a cultural context - and much more!, June 19, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music, from the Old World to the Jazz Age to the Downtown Avant Garde (Paperback)
The author does a great job of putting the technical and artistic components of Klezmer music into an historical and cultural context and following its evolution within that context, as well as independent of it. He does it in a way that is both entertaining and scholarly without being ponderous. The discography is an invaluable resource.
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First Sentence:
Like most Americans my age (I was born in 1960), I was raised on a steady diet of popular music, beginning with the Beatles and progressing steadily onward through whatever the pop charts threw at me. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Old World, New York, Dave Tarras, Andy Statman, Naftule Brandwein, Global Village, Klezmer Conservatory Band, New Orleans, Michael Alpert, Mickey Katz, John Zorn, David Krakauer, Henry Sapoznik, Knitting Factory, Lorin Sklamberg, Radical Jewish Culture, Alicia Svigals, Hasidic New Wave, Joel Rubin, Naftule's Dream, Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern, New Klezmer Trio, Abe Schwartz, Don Byron
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