Like people, music travels. How else could a handful of Japanese musicians have come to embrace klezmer, a centuries-old Eastern European folk music historically associated with traditional Jewish weddings?
Throughout much of its history, klezmer was dismissed -- sometimes reviled -- as crude folk music. Largely forgotten throughout the mid-20th century, klezmer began making a comeback among both Jewish and non-Jewish musicians in the early 1980s, first in the United States, then Europe, Israel and elsewhere.
Its popular acceptance was secured when the revered Israeli classical violinist Itzak Perlman went in search of his musical roots in the documentary film "In the Fiddler's House," which was broadcast on public television in the United States in 1995. The film led to the release of two compact discs, the first of which has sold over 250,000 copies.