Intercultural musicking - portraits and narratives of klezmer ensemble performance

Abstract

This article focuses on one example of intercultural musicking (IcM) - when mostly non-Jewish music students experience unfamiliar methods to learn to perform klezmer which for most of them is an unfamiliar music culture - and the value later attached to this experience. We briefly introduce klezmer as a music culture and our teaching of it. We then describe the combination of visual and narrative methods - also unfamiliar to participants - which we used to explore former students’ experience of performing klezmer. We discuss illustrative data from these ensemble alumni. We review our learning from this alumni-based practice-evaluation study regarding student development of transmusicality and intercultural personhood. We conclude with our insights into the use of visual and narrative methods in exploring the value of intercultural music education.