NORMAL - When Chicago's Maxwell Street Klezmer Band traveled south to Normal's ISU quad 11 years ago this week, two historical precedents were set:

• It was the band's first big show in front of a Central Illinois audience.

• It was Central Illinois' first time as an audience in front of a klezmer band.

The occasion was the 1997 opener for Illinois State University's venerable Concert on the Quad summer series of free outdoor concerts.

At the time, some were heard asking: "What is this klezmer, anyway?"

At the same time, some were heard answering: "Think of 'To Life,' from 'Fiddler on the Roof,' goosed up with some Dixieland, some big band, some hot jazz and some Alison Krauss fiddle licks."

History is about to repeat itself, sort of, as the same band opens the same concert series, at 7 p.m. Monday.

Accordingly, some folks may wind up asking the above question again, never mind that groups like the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band have raised the music form's profile higher than it was 11 summers ago.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the group has played a major role in reintroducing the infectious Jewish music form to both the American Jewish community and the country at large.

A quarter century ago, the group's founder, Lori Lippitz, was "a folk musician playing Vietnam anti-war songs" when she heard a klezmer group on the radio.

"That's Jewish music?," she marveled. "That's terrific. We need one of those here (in Chicago)." And thus the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band was born under her auspices in 1983.

For the record, the ancient Hebrew definition of klezmer is "a vessel of song or instrument."

In Yiddish, says Lippitz, "it came to mean a musician, particularly a street musician or folk musician - someone you would hire for dancing at a celebration."

Along the way, these musical gypsies absorbed a variety of musical styles, "then played and improvised and learned a new repertoire by heart."

According to vocalist Kimber Leigh Nussbaum, who joined the band in 2000, the instrumentation that came to characterize klezmer is tied to that gypsy heritage.

"Since they were traveling musicians, the instruments had to be ones they could carry with them easily, like clarinets, violins and squeeze boxes," she says.

Klezmer was the music people were dancing to in Eastern Europe, circa the 1600s and onward - and not just for Jewish occasions. "Anything that needed music," says Lippitz.

Along the way, bits and pieces of polka, waltz, Balkan dance music and "anything in the air" was absorbed into the boisterous style.

And when Eastern Europeans partied in the 17th century, they partied hearty. "They didn't go on for three hours like they do here in the Midwest - they might go on for seven days."

The music continued to evolve, when, between 1880 and 1920, the religious movement known as Hasidim swept the Jewish communities of Europe - "a populist, ecstatic religious movement," says Lippitz, "that became the primary motive of Judaism."

Swept along with the movement was klezmer, which was adapted and incorporated into prayer, with much "dancing and leaping and whirling around - it was a very neat combination of the earthly secular dance enthusiasm and real strong religious fervor."

That's where, she adds, "it got that laughing-crying-erratic-ecstatic quality that makes it exciting."

As analogy, think of American gospel music morphing into secular Motown pop during the '60s - "it's still gospel at the root."

The next evolutionary leap was made as European Jews began immigrating to the U.S. at the turn of the century. During that period, klezmer began shaking hands with Dixieland jazz during the '20s and '30s, and big band swing during the '40s.

Then came klezmer's Dark Ages: The younger generation, in its eagerness to assimilate into the American mainstream, turned its back on its ethnic heritage, musical ones included. Then the Holocaust of World War II nearly ended the tradition altogether.

"It severed the connection of the Jews in America and the Jews of Europe, who, basically, were no more. A whole way of life went up in smoke, literally," Lippitz says.

Salvation came around 20 years later with the arrival of a little Broadway show called "Fiddler on the Roof," whose score incorporated elements of klezmer.

Suddenly, the dying musical form was alive and well and flourishing smack in the middle of the American mainstream.

With the passing of another two decades, the time was right for the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, christened after Chicago's famed open-air Sunday market packed with Jewish pushcart peddlers.

Though Lippitz isn't taking lead vocals as often as she did when the band first played the ISU quad in 1997, Nussbaum has been filling the role for eight years now, at everything from the weddings and bar mitzvahs that comprise the band's bread-and-butter to concert situations like the ISU quad series.

"You're definitely going to see an upbeat, joyous affair, with a nice mix of everything from some slower melancholy tunes to Yiddish theater tunes to happy, upbeat tunes," she says.

Lippitz adds, "It's just wonderfully accessible, joyful, racy, a cross between cartoon, gypsy and circus music, with all the flavor of Eastern European music - very catchy, very fun. Like Benny Goodman meets the Red Army Choir."

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At a glance

What: Illinois State University Concerts on the Quad Series

When: 7 p.m. Mondays, June 30 through July 28

Where: Northwest corner of ISU quad, near Cook Hall; rain location, ISU Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall

Cost: Free (bring lawn chairs or blankets for seating)

Parking: Faculty-staff parking lots (marked with red signs) after 6:30 p.m.; pay lot at Bone Student Center; parking ramp at University Street

Concert schedule:

• June 30: Maxwell Street Klezmer Band

• July 7: An Evening of Chamber Music, with ISU string faculty and guests

• July 14: Fiddleback, St. Louis-based bluegrass-folk-rock trio

• July 21: 10th Annual ISU Jazz Festival, with ISU faculty musicians and guests

• July 28: Singing Under the Stars, Broadway and operatic selections by ISU vocal faculty and guests