The 20th annual KlezKamp has come and gone. Proud parent, Bob Blacksberg, has done his usual wonderful job of taking pictures and putting them online. You can sample them at rblacksberg.com/page2.html. Lots of people posted to the Jewish-Music mailing list, and gave me permission to gather everyone’s excitement, pleasure, kvetches, and everything that makes KlezKamp the wonderful experience that it is into one long webpage on the KlezmerShack.

It’s important that we have gatherings like KlezKamp, KlezCalifornia, KlezKanada and the rest. I really dig the new Jewish music, from the Hip Hop Hoodios to Golem and Sarah Aroeste and Khevre and Pharoah’s Daughter. But klezmer is the music that was the key, for me, to get really into Jewish music for the first time and to begin to realize that there was something there more authentic than “Fiddler on the Roof”. Would I get Aaron Alexander or Anthony Coleman, neither of whom have much to do with Klezmer if I hadn’t heard this stuff to begin with? I dunno. I don’t know that I would have been listening for them to “get” them.

In common with all religions, the Klezmer faith is not the only path to oneness and nirvana. But it’s a damn fun way to go, just the same.