Yale Strom

Multimedia artist Yale Strom dedicated the focus of his work as a filmmaker, violinist and author to preserving the musical traditions of the Jewish culture largely obliterated by the Holocaust. Born in the U.S. in 1957 to Eastern European parents who managed to survive the atrocities of the Hitler regime, Strom grew fascinated by klezmer, the most widely-known outgrowth of Jewish music thanks to its absorption into Gypsy culture. Prior to forming a pair of klezmer bands — the New York-based Hot Pstromi and San Diego's Klazzj — Strom travelled to the Carpathian Mountains region of the southwestern Ukraine to research his 1994 book On Certain Roads: Searching for the Gypsies, the result of some 15 years of studying the connection between the musical cultures of the Gypsies and the Jews. Strom's experiences in the Ukraine eventually led to his 1994 film The Last Klezmer, a documentary portrait of the Polish performer Leopold Koslowski. While filming, he also met Zev Godringer, an Auschwitz survivor who inspired Strom's 1996 documentary Carpati: 50 Years, 50 Miles, an exploration of the culture of post-Holocaust life in the Carpathians. Strom also performed the klezmer music found on the film's soundtrack, available on the Global Village label. The Wandering Jew followed in 1997, trailed two years later by Tales Our Fathers Sang and Garden of Yidn in early 2001.