Jewish exiles left Central Europe before and after World War I. They took their elaborate musical traditions to the United States and recorded dazzling evidence of their very expressive, Gypsy-tinged party dance music, which thrived on rhythm and where improvisation preceded that of jazz. Bruno Blum comments on these genuine rare, precious, influential and founding recordings of modern Klezmer, a genre overlooked since the 1940s and revived in the Twenty-First Century as it merges with current jazz. Often instrumental, Klezmer music featured virtuosos such as clarinetists Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras. Essential, compelling, one-of-a-kind documents _ all remarkably well-recorded for the time. Patrick FREMEAUX