Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World. (Book Reviews).

Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World. By Mark Slobin. (American Musicspheres.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. [154 p. + 1 CD. ISBN 0-19-513124-X. $35.11

This is a beautifully written book on a timely topic by a well-informed author. The first offering in Oxford's American Musics-spheres series, of which Slobin is general editor, Fiddler on the Move examines the current revival of klezmer, Yiddish (mostly) instrumental music.

Only 154 pages (plus compact disc), Fiddler on the Move is not a comprehensive survey of klezmer. Three recent books fill that role: Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin's Klezmer-Muzik (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1999), Seth Rogovoy's The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music, from the Old World to the Jazz Age to the Downtown Avont-Gorde (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2000), and Henry Sapoznik's Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World (New York: Schirmer Books, 1999). Slobin investigates klezmer's social meaning and function, using the methodologies of anthropology and critical theory as well as transcription and analysis. Klezmer becomes a case study of a minority music that is both an application and an extension of ideas Slobin intro-duced in Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West (Hannover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, University Press of New England, 1993; 2d ed., 2000). He demonstrates that klezmer is simultaneously similar to other Western mic romusics in the ways it is made and displayed, and unique both historically and in its current revival. Its uniqueness is rooted in the lives of Jews, whose people-hood defies easy categorization in such customary guises as culture, faith, nation, or ethnicity.

There are six chapters. The introductory "Under the Klezmer Umbrella" provides basic klezmer history and a status report on the revival. In chapter 2, "Klezmer as a Heritage Music," Slobin characterizes heritage music as new rather than old, built of and for remembrance; despite its Eastern European roots, klezmer has its epicenter of activity in the United States. The many categories of heritage include national, exotic, and diasporic. Klezmer straddles all, falling easily into none.

Chapter 3, "Klezmer as an Urge," explores the revival's most critical issue--its motivations. Surely klezmer's rhythms are exciting, its melodies ...