Monthly Archive

From the Bronx to the Bosphorus: Klezmer and Other Displaced Musics of New York. Walter Zev Feldman. New York: Fordham University Press. 2025.

Reviewed by Yale Strom

Walter Zev Feldman’s From the Bronx to the Bosphorus (2025) is a hybrid work of memoir and cultural history that documents both the author’s personal trajectory and the diasporic musical traditions that shaped his career as a performer and scholar. The book does not conform to the structure of a conventional academic monograph; instead, Feldman weaves a richly layered narrative tracing his family roots, his musical education, and the many diasporic traditions he encountered in New York from the 1950s through the 1990s. During this period, immigrant cafés, clubs, and social gatherings served as vital spaces for the transmission of traditional repertoires, and Feldman positions himself as both participant and chronicler in this world.