Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

D.J. Without Borders

Sam Hopkins, aka DJ Balagan (Balagan is Hebrew for tumult), is a mixer, drummer and producer. His newest album, “Funny Accent,” is a mix tape in the most classic sense. Rather than simply sample older songs for his own aggrandizement, Hopkins removes himself from the process — acting more like a museum curator than an artist. The result is one of the most fascinating documents of 2007. Funny Accent is the statement of a fan toting around a crate of LPs, and in the process of showing them off, Hopkins tells the story of a Jewish musical history.

Hopkins, 24, studied linguistics when he attended the University of Kansas (his family has been from Kansas going back a century) and speaks numerous languages with varying levels of proficiency. He says he’s fluent in English, Hebrew, French, Spanish, German, Yiddish and Portuguese, and speaks some Arabic, Chinese and Russian as well. That eclecticism is well represented on Funny Accent, where one track can skip across several continents.

The album’s mission statement is best articulated on the opening track, “Funny Accent Intro,” which opens by sampling instructional record Hopkins found in a thrift store. “Experts agree that everyone is born with a gift for languages. You have this gift,” a British-accented voice says, while Hopkins mixes in an Egyptian song and original beats. By the end of the track, we’ve heard a Yiddish clip from Shalom Dzigan, an Israeli comic. “Yiddish is important to me,” Hopkins explains. “The way it nurtured Jewish culture for so long but got cast to the wind after the war by so many people.”

Like many mix tapes, “Funny Accent” leaves feeling the promise of the artist is yet unfulfilled. It is built to increase anticipation for future releases, and Hopkins promises a proper release by next year. He says he looks forward to doing original material.

Hopkins broke down for us one of the tracks on his mix: “Breakdancing at the UN.”

0:00: “The first song is from Cameroon, a guy called Sam Fan Thomas. It’s a take on an older style called Makossa, called Makassi here. [It] has sort of a Prince feel, obviously African, but from the 80s. There’s an element of time to the music, not just place.”

3:01: “Yeah, that’s Rodney Dangerfield. That was actually in the original of the song that follows – Chuck Chillout and Cool Chip’s ‘Rhythm is the Master.’ That itself is made from samples, Talking Heads and Strafe-Set It Off. That song is sort of a relic because the samples are so obvious, people would be less inclined to make that beat for release these. The late-80s string of lawsuits made producers more sheepish on that.”

6:44: “It’s Indian. It’s called New Delhi Vice, by Ashwin Batish.”

10:01 “The last track is a B-Boy Jam by Yellow Magic Orchestra from Japan.”


Mordechai Shinefield has written about music for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and the New York Press.

For more Melody Macher columns, click here.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.