Re: growth in interest in Yiddishkeit

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

>For a project I'm working on, I am looking for hard figures documenting
>the growth of interest in Yiddishkeit in general and Klezmer (neo-Klezmer,
>New Jewish music, whatever you want to call it) in particular.

A good source for this would be the National Yiddish Book Center,
over in your neck of the woods (well, Amherst, so just up the road).
  
They don't have a web site live yet, but you'd want to speak
with either the director, Aaron Lansky, or one of their pr folks.
   413 256 4900 / fax: 413 256 4700

You might also want to post this question to the "Yiddishnet" list:
   yiddishnet (at) shamash(dot)org

And I'd, for sure, talk with the folks at Living Traditions (who put
on KlezKamp each year): livetrads (at) aol(dot)com

You might also ask the Shanachie A&R person who works with klez:
   Charlie Dahan   (munchdahan (at) aol(dot)com) 
regarding album sales in the genre. They are probably the general-
purpose label with the best klezmer presence.

ari