Klezmer You Can Own

Critically acclaimed, Schleppin’ West, the exhilarating album from the Best Little Klezmer Band in Texas, is available for sale.

Experience the musical tradition of Klezmer doinas, freilachs, and Yiddish favorites… all with a Texas Flair!

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Klezmer Revival and Historical Context

A lost musical world that was once one of the central cultural expressions in the life of Eastern European Jewry is being recreated today in the music of America's latter-day Klezmers. With the destruction of the last shtetls (small towns) in Eastern Europe five decades ago, this rich tradition was silenced. Then something unexpected happened: In grandmother's attic, surfaced old 78RPM recordings from that bygone era.

For the Love of Klezmer

Who knew that just six weeks after the most joyous moment of my life, after the stomping of the wedding glass to the universal shouts of "mazl tov!" our life in Ganeydn - our Garden of Eden - our Paradise - was about to end. We're being transferred where? To Houston! With a sinking feeling, I sensed I was about to be thrust headlong into an epic culture shock: from cosmopolitan Chicago to the deserts of the Southwest. Could there be Borsht on the Bayou? Yiddishkayt in Texas?

Yet to my immense surprise, the great Southwest embraced KLEZMER with an unimaginable passion. Our music seemed to trigger a connection with the Freylakhayt that played such a vital role in our ancestors' lives. It was like receiving a letter from the Old Country:

Mayn tayere cousine Malke.

A Letter From the Old Country

Yesterday we celebrated my brother Avrohn's wedding to Dvorka, you know, the one we called 'die wilde'. The whole shtetl was there. You should have heard the klezmorim! Yankele Grossbart played his clarinet as if he had learned music from King David himself. The fiddlers, black Shmulik and red-haired Itzik, played as if they had been touched by angels. We danced to their Freylakhs late into the night. If only you could have been with us!

Your loving cousin, Miriam."

It is their music that brings our ancestors back to life, our ancestors from Odessa and Lodz, from Podgorzse and Berdichev. My grandparents were among the first wave of Jewish immigrants to arrive in the Goldene Medine - the Golden Land, America - in 1881. They brought along their customs and traditions that had kept Jewish families together. The melodies they sang, the music they played at family gatherings, brought with them the feeling of the shtetls they had left behind. Their music, now our music, is the unbroken chain that binds us to our Jewish past.

And so, with our first album, SCHLEPPIN' WEST, we bring you a taste of home.

Oyf a gute shuh; may we meet on many happy occasions."

Marcia Sterling