Violinist, composer, filmmaker, writer, photographer and playwright Yale Strom was a pioneer among revivalists in conducting extensive field research in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans among the Jewish and Roma communities since the early 1981.
Initially, his work focused primarily on the use and performance of klezmer music among these two groups. Gradually, his focus increased to examining all aspects of their culture, from post-World War II to the present. Over more than 3 decades and 75 such research expeditions, Strom has become one of the world's leading scholar-ethnographer-artists of klezmer music, history and culture.