Image: Wikimedia Commons

klezmer

Instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe

Entitymusic genre music tradition of Jewish ethnic groups type of danceQ212944

Also known as klezmer music

Instance of: music genre
1
Sources
1.Stated in Rate Your Musicrateyourmusic.com/genre/Klezmer/
View statement on Wikidata ↗
, music tradition of Jewish ethnic groups
, type of dance
Subclass of: Jewish music
1
Sources
1.Stated in Rate Your Musicrateyourmusic.com/genre/Jewish+Music/
View statement on Wikidata ↗

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Klezmer is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker.

Overview

All data

42 statements · 24% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Practiced by: klezmer musician
Intangible cultural heritage status: National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine(since 2022) inventory number: 032.нкс · described at url: uccs.org.ua · located in: Odesa Oblast

On other databases

32 identifiers linking klezmer across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

24%

externally sourced

Source last edited September 30, 2026. AIDb refreshes this page daily.

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AIDb. (2026). klezmer (Q212944). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/klezmer-Q212944