Yiddish Music
Music is a form of art that uses sound as its medium. And our world is full of
various music forms coming from different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities.
Music is a very good medium of sharing the message of love and peace with the
world. Our days would be really dull without good music because they fabricate
our lives and gives a definition to the society. One such music form is the
Yiddish music.Yiddish music has its roots in the Jewish religion..
The love of Jewish for music can be seen in the earliest stories in the
bible. Music is an integral part of the Jewish worship. Even most of their
prayers are either sung or enchanted. In Jewish culture it has been
customary since hundreds of years to have a professional Chazzan who is the
person with excellent musical skills and their duty is to lead a song filled
prayer service.
Yiddish culture has produced a wealth of music ranging from lullabies to
love songs, from sad mournful music to exit to the wild dance music of
Klezmer. Yiddish music has a very large collection of music. Some are soft,
others are fast. There are traditional as well as modern songs. Other all
time favorite artists are Ladino, Klezmer, cantorial, Chassidic and Israeli
music.
However in the later days, the clarinet became a staple of the Yiddish music because of its ability to mimic the human voices like wailing and laughing sounds of people.Traditionally the Yiddish music was played on a string instruments like fiddle or a viola. A Jewish instrument called tsimbl which is very similar to dulcimer and flute were also used.
Perhaps the reason behind use of these instruments was that they
are soft and relatively quiet and also they would not attract the attention
of the hostile gentiles. Many famous musicians have made their contributions
in popularizing and taking Yiddish music to other countries. Some of these
brilliant artists are Dudu Fisher and Chava Alberstein who have at least
once to present good Yiddish music to people across world.
Yiddish music has the goal of spreading the Jewish culture through its music
and send across social messages of peace. In order to achieve this goal
Yiddish musicians ensure a good selection of music titles, instruments and
liturgic. A unique selection is also made between the modern, traditional
and antique folk songs in Yiddish music.
Yiddish culture is most commonly associated with the klezmer style of music.
Klezmer comes from a Hebrew words "klei zemer" which means ’instruments of
sound’ and it probably indicates the importance of the instruments played in
this style of music.
Jewish movies play the klezmer music as a background score of many
television shows and Jewish movies. This type of music is generally
categorized by sounds of wailing, squeezing and sounds of clarinets. Many
modern bands have also been influenced by Yiddish music and helped in
spreading the Jewish culture and values across world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klezmer_music.