What made you choose to express yourself through the medium of klezmer, a musical tradition that had long been ostensibly codified, culturally-specific, and mostly forgotten? Seth Kibel

Seth Kibel

I am surely not the first person to argue this, but I believe that the klezmer revival is over. The music has now been revived and become another vista in the American musical landscape that includes so many other vital genres of music. As such, we are at an exciting time in the history of this music.

After several hundred years of klezmer being shaped and transformed by external musical influences (first Arabic, then Eastern European and Roma, and most recently a wealth of American influences), we are beginning to see, for the first time in its history, that klezmer is molding and re-shaping other genres of music. Thus, we have new works appearing yearly on the concert stage that bear the unmistakable fingerprint of klezmer. There is also a burgeoning scene of exciting and innovative jazz that has clearly been influenced by klezmer. To me, this is proof that klezmer has become a central part of the American musical vernacular.