His father, Max Feldman, was born in Edinet, Bessarabia. He is author of the books Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition, and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (Berlin, 1996), and Klezmer: Music, History, & Memory (Oxford, 2016), and has contributed the entries "Ottoman Music", and "Klezmer Music" to the New Groves Dictionary of Musicand Musicians. In 2004 he co-directed the successful application of the Mevlevi Dervishes of Turkey as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity for UNESCO. His current research inte- rests include the relation of rhythmic cycle (usul) and melody in Ottoman music, and gesture in Ashkenazic Jewish and other dance cultures. Klezmer is the first comprehensive study of the musical structure and social history of klezmer music -the music ofthe Jewish musicians' guild of Eastern Europe. Emerging in 16th century Prague, the klezmer became a central cultural feature of the largest transnational Jewish community ofmodern times - the Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe-until the decades following World War .I Author Walter Z e Feldman treats the major sources in relevant languages- principally Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Romanian - from the 16th to the 20th centuries, including interviews with authorita- tive European-born klezmorim, conducted over a period of more than thirty years in America, Eastern Europe and Israel.