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In her inaugural lecture as Rose Professor, Frances Tanzer gave a sketch of her new project, Klezmer Dynasty: An Intimate History of Modern Jewish Culture. At the heart of her research is a branch of her own family tree, the Brandwein klezmer musicians of Hapsburg Galicia. Their story spans three centuries as the family grappled with the tensions between tradition and modernity, the urban and rural, Jews and non-Jews, and the Holocaust and its aftermath. Tanzer posed several key questions to guide her story across many generations, places, and cultures from which klezmer music emerged: what happened to the cultures in the multi-ethnic borderlands as their contexts changed over time, and what new meanings can we derive from them? How did klezmer move from the margins to the mainstream in Europe, and what does that say about the relationship between Jews, Jewish culture, non-Jews, and the Holocaust?
