Klezmer Cafe / Various - Klezmer Cafe [CD]

There is a very particular charm about klezmer music that cannot be found in other styles of music. It's a kind of melancholic exuberance; at once happy and sad, klezmer sounds simultaneously like laughing and weeping. Klezmer is a musical genre in a constant state of evolution. Perhaps it's history lends itself to this- the original klezmorim were itinerant musicians who would travel around the shtetls of Eastern Europe performing at weddings and other occasions, until displacement of the Jewish population in the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw klezmer make it's way to America where it met with jazz and other western music. These qualities make it difficult to pinpoint exactly what klezmer is today. To quote Gustavo Bulgach, whose band Klezmer Juice is featured on this collection, "klezmer is like a soapy pig. Everybody's trying to catch it, but every time someone gets ahold of it, it slips away from them."