- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 1, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0199314748
- ISBN-13: 978-0199314744
Klezmer in Europe has been a controversial topic ever since this
traditional Jewish wedding music made it to the concert halls and discos
of Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest and Prague. Played mostly by non-Jews and
for non-Jews, it was hailed as "fakelore," "Jewish Disneyland" and even
"cultural necrophilia." Klezmer's Afterlife is the first book
to investigate this fascinating music scene in Central Europe, giving
voice to the musicians, producers and consumers of the resuscitated
klezmer. Contesting common hypotheses about the klezmer revival in
Germany and Poland stemming merely from feelings of guilt which emerged
in the years following the Holocaust, author Magdalena Waligorska
investigates the consequences of the klezmer boom on the people who
staged it and places where it occurred. Offering not only a
documentation of the klezmer revival in two of its European headquarters
(Kraków and Berlin), but also an analysis of the Jewish / non-Jewish
encounter it generates, Waligorska demonstrates how the klezmer revival
replicates and reinvents the image of the Jew in Polish and German
popular culture, how it becomes a soundtrack to Holocaust commemoration
and how it is used as a shining example of successful cultural policy by
local officials. Drawing on a variety of fields including musicology,
ethnomusicology, history, sociology, and cultural studies, Klezmer's Afterlife
will appeal to a wide range scholars and students studying Jewish
culture, and cultural relations in post-Holocaust central Europe, as
well as general readers interested in klezmer music and music revivals
more generally.
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