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The Yiddish word klezmer referred to professional Jewish musicians. Besides entertaining for the gentile public, these klezmorim commonly played at weddings in the shtetls, close-knit Jewish communities that speckled the Eastern European landscape up until the World War II. The language of these Jews was Yiddish, and today Yiddish songs comprise a large part of klezmer repertoire. The word klezmer comes from the Hebrew words kle, vessel or instrument, and zemer which means song. Klezmer music made an appearance in the United States in the wave of immigration in the early 1900s. However, it did not take on the new soil, as younger generations of musicians and listeners rejected their roots, turning to more ´American´ musical styles. Klezmer music in America was thus quickly disappearing, only occasionally surfacing in the mainstream in the form of Jewified jazz. As the war wiped out the remnants of Yiddish life in Europe, the prospects for klezmer music seemed bleak.