Tools of Song – Some Klezmer Notes to a Polish Beat

Text: Arek Cholewa
Translation: the courtesy of John Kearns

"...in the streets one could hear the fiddle slowly playing Hasidic melodies. Shloyma Linshetser’s weeping fiddles. The stars in heaven and the white world around listen rapt in silence. Hasids singing sweet songs. Lamps and candles peeping out of windows... and fiddles playing, Hasids singing...” So writes the Sholem Asch describing Kazimierz Dolny in his novella ‘A Shtetl’ (1904).

In Hebrew the word כלי זמר (k'li zemer) literally means "tool of song". The phrase brings to mind a set of musical instruments used during sacrificial ceremonies at the altar, where the Lord was praised in song and dance. ‘K'li zemer’ thus denotes holy instruments, necessary for performing religious ceremonies.

From the second half of the eighteenth century to the Second World War almost every Polish village was filled with the melodies played by Jewish musicians known as kleyzmorim or kleyzmerim. While some of them led settled lifestyles, others were more nomadic, wandering like bards from village to village, from weddings to other religious ceremonies. Some performed for street audiences, others in inns, taverns and on the estates of the nobility. Most often, however, they played during Jewish weddings, called khasenes. Wandering around the country, these Klezmer musicians met each other, sharing new variations of Jewish melodies and mutually inspiring each other. Some of the musicians became quite famous and the art of Klezmer was passed down from generation to generation.

The character of Klezmer music changed somewhat under the influence of Hasidic religious movements. On the one hand, every Hasidic estate had its own Klezmer musicians who wanted to distinguish their style from those of others by developing their own specific melodies and harmonies. On the other hand this Hasidic music also had a certain mystical and spiritual role: singing and playing was not only for pleasure, but was primarily sacred.

Modern Jewish musicians now use the contemporary instruments typical of their environments rather than the drums, trumpets, lyres and harps associated with the old religious ceremonies. It would be impossible to imagine Klezmer without the sound of the fiddle, though other popular instruments include the accordion, double bass, flute, trumpet and dulcimer.

Following the Holocaust and the Second World War, the centre of traditional Jewish music became New York and it is there that it has survived in its own traditional form. The real renaissance of Klezmer in Poland did not take place until the 1990s, with a new generation of performers lending a fresh lease of life to the old music. Nowadays Klezmer – or rather neo-Klezmer, as it is referred to – is present not only at weddings and Jewish feasts, but first and foremost at music festivals and it has become extremely fashionable in artistic circles.

There has been a growth in the numbers of Klezmer groups being formed. While some gain inspiration from traditional Jewish music, others have developed their own particular musical avant-garde influenced by jazz, folk, rock, funk, reggae and even hip hop. This phenomenon has often been described as radical Jewish culture.