-by Marty Lipp/For The Star-Ledger

Tuesday June 03, 2008, 10:00 PM

The Manhattan center began in 1968 as the Balkan Arts Center, growing out of that era's counterculture-led folk revival. As many young Americans began to appreciate American music that pre-dated rock 'n' roll, a smaller number discovered folk music from other countries.

The center's co-founder and artistic director, Ethel Raim, began as a fan of Balkan dance and music. At the Newport Folk Festival sometime in the 1960s, she recalls, she loved the southern roots music, but realized there were no sounds that she had heard growing up in New York.

When Raim and Martin Koenig formed the Balkan Arts Center, it expanded through a series of community initiatives that focused on the music played in the greater New York metro area: Albanian, Italian, Jewish, Arab, Mexican, African.

For example, in the late 1970s, the center was approached by Andy Statman -- at that time a noted bluegrass banjo player -- who had tracked down clarinetist Dave Tarras, one of the stars of Jewish music in the 1930s. Tarras was retired, in part because the music "for all intents and purposes vanished," says Raim.

The center organized a Tarras tour, and 400 fans were turned away at one show in Manhattan. That success of what the center dubbed "klezmer" helped spur a new generation of musicians.

Bringing together women who played traditional Irish music, the center helped launch Cherish the Ladies, and it also aided in the establishment of the Mariachi Academy of New York.

In addition to documenting and recording music from immigrant groups, the center works with people in each community to stage local concerts. It also sponsors tours of artists in the larger community, Raim says, giving the musicians "a sense there's a real place in this new setting for them."

Raim says some arrive with a "reputation that really precedes them," as was the case when the "Queen of Albanian Music," Merita Halili, and her husband, Raif Hyseni, came to the United States in the mid-'90s.

Having worked in the Albanian community, Raim soon heard that the couple emigrated and began to help them perform for non-Albanian audiences. Hyseni says he and his wife, who live in Caldwell, had been able to make a living in music because of the hundreds of thousands of Albanians in the area. Still, they return to Albania regularly, just recently to receive an award for promoting Albanian music around the world. They will perform at the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center in June and an international accordion festival in Manhattan on July 12.

Saxophonist Yuri Yunakov, who lives in Bloomfield, helped spread the popularity of Bulgarian wedding music, yet, as a Gypsy, or Roma, he was subjected to harassment and even jailed. Concerned for the safety of his family, he immigrated to the U.S. and also worked with the center. He performs his own music each Friday at the Manhattan club Mehanata, but also plays a variety of styles for different ethnic groups in the region.

Haitian drummer Gaston "Bonga" Jean-Baptiste is in Jersey City and plays at such events as healing ceremonies and rock concerts. He says the center also helped place his ensemble, the Vodou Drums of Haiti, in front of non-Haitian audiences. They have an upcoming performance at the free Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival on Aug. 19.

Raim says each of the community initiatives has two goals: to pass traditions to the next generation and to widen the audience for the master musicians. After 40 years of experiencing music in homes, churches and in the streets, she concludes that the Northeast "has incredible riches."