The Klezmer Guild as an Expression of the New Yiddish Culture, Emanating from Bohemia to Poland-Lithuania in the Sixteenth Century,
Beginning in the tenth century, Bohemia/Moravia were the home to the oldest continuous Jewish population in North Eastern Europe. The most recent scholarship describes the use of Judeo-Czech (“Lesohon Knaan”) from this period, and its gradual replacement by what might be termed the Yiddish language, as a fusion of Middle High German, Czech, Romance, and Hebrew-Aramaic.
It was only with the acquisition of Bohemia by the Habsburgs in 1526 and then the inauguration of Emperor Rudolph II in 1567 that the local Jews were able to form guilds of skilled craftsmen and artists. Among these the musicians’ guild, known as “kleizemer” (=Yid. klezmer; ”vessels of song”). While the exact date of the guild’s incorporation are unknown, by the end of the century it was to become established—and under the same name—everywhere in North Eastern Europe for the following four centuries. It was thus co-terminous with the spread of the Eastern Yiddish language, which was documented throughout Bohemia and then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by the middle of the sixteenth century. Thus the instrumental music of the klezmer--as well as its accompanying dance—became essential features of the expressive culture of the largest transnational Jewish culture of modern times.
Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music. During the 1970s he spearheaded the revival of klezmer music. Today he is a performer on the klezmer dulcimer, the cimbal, and on the Ottoman lute, the tanbur. His book, Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition, and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (Berlin, 1996) is taught as a basic text worldwide. A new edition is being prepared by the Brill Press. His Klezmer: Music, History and Memory, was published by Oxford University Press (2016). Between 2011 and 2015 he researched the Jewish, Roma, and Greek musical traditions of Moldova/Bessarabia, sponsored by NYU Abu Dhabi.
Walter Zev Feldman. Photo credit: David Kaufman
Feldman is also an authority on Ashkenazic dance, forming part of his current research on the role of gesture in the performing arts, which he taught in the NYU Abu Dhabi core course “Gesture” (2013-15) and in NYU on the Square (2018). In 2017 he gave a series of workshops on this topic in Tokyo, Moscow, and in Montreal. In 2004 he co-directed the successful application of the Mevlevi Dervishes of Turkey as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity for UNESCO. His new book, From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes: Music, Poetry and Mysticism in the Ottoman Empire, supported by the Aga Khan Music Programme, was published by Edinburgh University Press
Walter Zev Feldman is a Senior Research Fellow affiliated with New York University, Abu Dhabi.
He is the artistic director of the Klezmer Institute and a board member of the Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae Project of the University of Münster, and of the Istanbul Research Institute.
Suggested donation: $15
RSVP HERE
The event will be filmed and accessible later on the SHCSJ YouTube channel.
The event is organized by the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews with support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York, Consulate General of the Slovak Republic in New York, and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association.
