Sneak Peek: Revisiting Andy Statman Podcast

Andy Statman: Klezmer music is the traditional instrumental music of the Jews of Eastern Europe. In what they call the Pale of Settlement. It'd be the Ukraine, Southern Poland and parts of Poland proper, Belarus, the areas around Romania. The emotional contact is distinctive. Basically, it's instrumental versions of Hasidic vocal music. So it's coming directly out of the religious milieu. In fact, most of the great klezmer musicians came from Hasidic families and were Hasidic. It's Hasidic vocal music played instrumentally, and it could either be actual Hasidic melodies, or melodies that would- were composed by the musicians themselves that might show their creativity and virtuosity. But the feeling they would invoke is the feeling of a Hasidic melody.