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About Our Group
What is Klezmer Music
Ensemble Members
Upcoming Events
About our group
MIT's klezmer ensemble, MIT Klez, is composed an assortment of undergraduate students, graduate students, and community members who enjoy making music. We learn klezmer musical styles and develop songs for performance.
MIT Klez meets regularly for rehearsals. New musicians are welcome. For
information contact mitklez@mit.edu
What is Klezmer Music:
The Yiddish word, klezmer, a contraction of the Hebrew words k’lei and zemer, meaning instruments of song, referred to itinerant musicians in 17th century Eastern Europe who would play at weddings and other simches (happy occasions), facilitating the exchange of musical traditions as they went. The cymbalom (a relative of the hammered dulcimer) and violin were the earliest klezmer instruments.
Just as the Yiddish language incorporated words from each country where Jews
lived in E. Europe, so did klezmer music incorporate themes from many lands.
In klezmer music one can hear echoes of synagogue chants, of gypsy music and
shepherd tunes from Rumania, of folkdance music from Russia and Ukraine, of Turkish
and Arabic rhythms, and of big band/jazz motifs from the New World. (“What is
Klezmer Music” text by Sheldon Benjamin)
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