From the Bronx to the Bosphorus

Discover the vibrant journey of music from New York’s melting pot to the mystical shores of the Bosphorus

From the Bronx to the Bosphorus explores the vibrant, yet largely concealed, musical culture of New York, tracing its origins to a period when the city served as a crucible for immigrants and their diverse musical expressions. Walter Zev Feldman chronicles his journey through the musical landscapes of post–WWII New York—from the declining world of East European immigrant klezmorim to the dynamic environments of Greek, Armenian, and Caucasian musicians.

These experiences culminate in the klezmer revitalization movement of the late 1970s. Feldman, whose father emigrated from Bessarabia—a region known for its rich interactions among Jewish, Roma, and Greek musicians—connects various musical worlds. From the local Turkish Sephardi synagogue and the Greek Orthodox cathedral in Washington Heights to the lively Armenian and Greek nightclubs of Manhattan, his interactions with a diverse group of musicians, including an Armenian virtuoso who once performed for Stalin and the Shah of Iran, enhance his understanding and appreciation of these interconnected cultures.

Finally, at age twenty-five, in a sense he returned to his father’s shtetl and studied with Dave Tarras, the greatest living klezmer in America, who had learned his key musical lessons in that very same Bessarabian town following World War I. From the Bronx to the Bosphorus is not just a chronicle of music but a poignant examination of the power of music to connect cultures, transcend borders, and preserve the echoes of a nearly vanished world.

Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music, instrumental in the 1970s Klezmer Revival. His notable works include Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory (2016) and Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (1996; 2024, revised edition). Feldman has extensively studied the instrumental traditions of Moldova’s klezmer and lautar communities. He is the Academic Director of the Klezmer Institute.Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music, instrumental in the 1970s Klezmer Revival. His notable works include Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory (2016) and Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (1996; 2024, revised edition). Feldman has extensively studied the instrumental traditions of Moldova’s klezmer and lautar communities. He is the Academic Director of the Klezmer Institute.

'If the klezmer revival had a beginning . . .' writes the author, about a transcendental music event – and here it is. Warmly readable from the first line, Walter Zev Feldman’s stories and reflections weave scholarly history and musical analysis into magnetic tales of lyrical realism and realistic lyricism. His detailed anecdotes of artists from New York to Armenia, from Colorado to Istanbul always convey their humanity, and his own: from precocious teen to legendary scholar and performer. Too compulsive to read slowly, too rich to read quickly, the book offers, in the author’s felicitous phrase, countless 'gestures of the soul.'---Judith Cohen, York University / Alan Lomax Archive

The eminent musicologist Zev Feldman takes the reader on a picturesque picaresque of his youthful adventures in world music, from the little-known ethnic clubs of New York City to the mountains of Aspen and out to Istanbul, featuring colorful characters and musical insights.---Mark Slobin, author of Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World

In this fascinating account of his multi-faceted career as a performer and musicologist, Walter Feldman moves artfully from his teen-age visits to émigré nightclubs in New York, to adventures later in his path, to portraits of individual musicians he came to know and the traditions which shaped their musical sensibilities. It is a pleasure to trace this itinerary from fan to professional.---Michael Beard, University of North Dakota

A triumph. Feldman retrieves a forgotten world of global cultures and communities commingling in 1960s and 1970s New York. We meet fascinating immigrant musicians and follow along as a pioneering musician and scholar reflects on the many diasporas that shaped his life and bred his powerful vision of the intertwined European and Asian musical pasts. In a graceful, poetic style enlivened with vivid dialogues, Feldman invites us to retrace his fascinating journey into his role as one of our leading musical minds.---James Loeffler, author of The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire

What a gift it is to have these stories from the living master not only of klezmer musicology, but the many worlds of music and language that touch and have been touched by this Jewish diasporic idiom. Feldman demonstrates here, and in a lifetime of performance and documentation, that the truest cosmopolitan is the one richly informed by his own ancestry and the very specific places that have shaped him.---Jonathan Boyarin, Diann G. and Thomas A. Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies, Cornell University