"Gadji-Gadjo" consists of six musicians in their 20's and early 30's who play klezmer and Gypsy music... and there's not a Jew or Gypsy among them. The name, in fact, is a Romani phrase referring to non-Gypsy men and women... a much wiser and catchier choice, I thought, than dubbing the group "The Goyim".

The joyous sounds of Gadji-Gadjo attracted thousands at the festival; people clapped along to the bulgars and doinas, and several young mothers danced in a circle with their toddlers. Did any of them, I wondered, know that what they were hearing were traditional Yiddish tunes from the long-gone shtetls of Eastern Europe? Did the musicians themselves understand the irony of Jewish music without Jews?

"It must be really strange for Jewish people to see non-Jews play this music," concedes Jean-Sebastien Leblanc, a 22-year-old hipster with a felt hat and an astonishingly authentic klezmer sound emanating from his clarinet. We spoke after one of the band's performances, and he was intrigued by the fact that I grew up hearing klezmer on the 78 RPM records my grandfather Moishe started buying shortly after his 1910 arrival in "Die Goldene Medina".

His eyes widened, however, when I revealed that one of my father's closest childhood friends was klezmer clarinetist Sid Beckerman, who played what the Washington Post once called his "highly ornamented, sinuously syncopated" melodies at my parents' wedding and at my Bar Mitzvah. The son of klezmer legend Shloimke Beckerman, Sid is one of the last living links to the soulful Yiddish folk music of Eastern Europe and the jazz-tinged version favored by second-generation Jews in America.

Jean-Sebastien was 18 when Gypsy music in a film by Yugoslav director Emir Kustirica caught his ear. He had studied classical music and jazz, and "a little bit of klezmer", but he soon became an ardent devotee of Gypsy songs and of high-spirited klezmer clarinetists such as Giora Feidman and the Beckermans. Within two years, he had formed Gadji-Gadjo.

"It's an honor for me to play this music; we really, really appreciate it," says Jean-Sebastien. "If I would see a guy in Eastern Europe playing Quebecois music, it probably would be funny to me, but why not?"

Why not, indeed? Upon returning home to New York, I called Sid Beckerman, who I'd not seen since my father's funeral nearly two decades ago. Now 86 and ailing, he was happy to hear that a 22-year-old clarinetist in Montreal knows of his work, and that Gadji-Gadjo is bringing klezmer music to new audiences. "If they feel good about it," said Sid, "I feel good."

I phoned Jean-Sebastien after speaking with Sid and gave him the veteran musician's regards, feeling like a bridge between two very different cultures and generations. Then I opened the band's CD and listened to a surprisingly peppy rendition of "Papirosn," the unbearably tragic composition about a hungry orphan boy peddling cigarettes on a rainy street corner. It was my dad's all-time favorite Yiddish song... and I think that he and Sid, not to mention Moishe and Shloimke, all would approve of the variation created and played with intense fervor and deep respect by Jean-Sebastien Leblanc and his merry band of French-Canadians.