Naftule's Dream

Appears on

• Top 6 Klezmer Artists of All Time

  Currently #6 · score 0

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• The Klezmatics

  The Klezmatics became the most commercially and critically significant band of the klezmer revival movement that began in the late 20th century, winning a Grammy Award for their 2006 album "Wonder Wheel," built around previously unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics set to original klezmer-influenced music. Formed in New York City in 1986, the band helped reintroduce klezmer's Eastern European Jewish folk and dance music tradition to a new generation of listeners, incorporating jazz, punk, and other contemporary influences into the genre's traditional clarinet-and-fiddle-driven sound. Their Grammy Award, the first ever given to a klezmer recording, reflected the broader mainstream American cultural recognition the klezmer revival movement achieved during the 1990s and 2000s, following decades in which the genre had significantly declined from its early-20th-century immigrant-community popularity. Their combination of their genre-first Grammy Award and their foundational role in the broader klezmer revival movement has made The Klezmatics almost universally regarded as the most significant klezmer band of the modern era.

• Giora Feidman

  Giora Feidman became one of the most internationally recognized klezmer clarinetists in the genre's history, earning the nickname "the King of Klezmer" for his virtuosic playing and his significant role introducing klezmer music to international concert audiences well beyond its traditional Jewish community context. His performance in the score of the 1993 film "Schindler's List," playing clarinet on the film's Academy Award-winning soundtrack, introduced his distinctive klezmer clarinet sound to an enormous global film audience, many of whom had never previously encountered the genre. Feidman's multi-decade international touring career, performing klezmer in concert halls across dozens of countries, helped establish the genre as a respected concert music tradition internationally rather than a purely community-based folk tradition confined to Jewish cultural events. His combination of his globally significant "Schindler's List" soundtrack performance and his sustained international concert career has made Feidman one of the most significant ambassadors for klezmer music worldwide.

• Andy Statman

  Andy Statman became one of the most significant figures in klezmer's late-20th-century revival, combining virtuosic clarinet and mandolin playing with deep scholarly knowledge of the genre's traditional Eastern European roots, helping preserve techniques that had nearly disappeared from American Jewish musical practice. His work studying directly with older-generation klezmer musicians who had learned the tradition before its mid-century American decline gave Statman's own playing a direct technical lineage back to klezmer's pre-revival practitioners, a genuine continuity few other revival-era musicians could claim. Statman's parallel career as a highly respected bluegrass mandolinist, performing and recording extensively in that genre alongside his klezmer work, reflected a genuinely unusual dual mastery across two distinct American folk music traditions. His combination of his direct technical lineage to klezmer's pre-revival tradition and his significant scholarly and performing contributions to the genre's preservation has made Statman one of the most historically important figures in klezmer's modern revival.

• Kapelye

  Kapelye became one of the founding bands of the American klezmer revival movement, forming in the late 1970s specifically to research and perform traditional klezmer repertoire that had largely fallen out of practice among American Jewish musicians by that point. The band's members conducted significant archival research into early-20th-century klezmer recordings and sheet music, helping recover and reconstruct traditional repertoire and playing techniques that directly informed the broader klezmer revival movement's subsequent development throughout the 1980s and beyond. Kapelye's 1981 album "Future and Past" became one of the klezmer revival's foundational recordings, helping establish the template that numerous subsequent revival-era klezmer bands, including The Klezmatics, built directly upon in the following decade. Their combination of their foundational archival research and their genre-launching early recordings has made Kapelye one of the most historically significant bands in klezmer's entire modern revival movement.

• Brave Old World

  Brave Old World became one of the klezmer revival's most artistically ambitious bands, formed in Chicago in the late 1980s by musicians who brought a more contemporary, arrangement-conscious approach to traditional klezmer repertoire than some of the revival's more strictly archival-focused earlier bands. Their collaborations with contemporary Yiddish poets and their incorporation of original compositions alongside traditional klezmer repertoire distinguished the band's approach from acts focused purely on historical reconstruction, treating klezmer as a living, still-evolving tradition rather than solely a preserved historical artifact. The band's members' individual backgrounds spanning classical, jazz, and folk music training gave their klezmer arrangements a level of compositional sophistication that helped further legitimize the genre within broader contemporary concert music circles. Their combination of their more compositionally ambitious approach to klezmer and their significant role treating the genre as a living tradition has made Brave Old World one of the most artistically significant bands in the klezmer revival.