Ethnomusicologist and BK member Marion Jacobson tells the story of how the “klezmer revival” sparked a worldwide renaissance in Jewish music and culture that left Jewish religious leaders (other than Reconstructionists!) scratching their heads with amazement. The presentation will be amply illustrated with images, musical examples, and stories from Marion’s ethnographic research in klezmer “hotspots” from YIVO to Krakow.

Marion Jacobson is an ethnomusicologist, music scholar and lover of all
things rooted in Yiddish, including klezmer. Her long list of published
scholarly articles on classical popular and liturgical Jewish music include
a  chapter on the Left Coast klezmer/vaudeville phenomenon in Mark Slobin's Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World (University of Illinois Press, 2003). Her accidental "discovery" of the lost world of Yiddish labormovement choruses in New York led to a PhD in music from NYU and a number of articles and talks on the topic. In her latest book, Squeeze This! A Cultural History of the Accordion (2012), Marion turns her analytical eye on one of the most Jewish and klezmerish of all instruments, the accordion.