Indie Rocker Ezra Furman Shares New Song About His Jewish Refugee Grandfather
Ezra Furman Image by EzraFurman.com
As he, acclaimed indie rocker (and gender nonconforming Shabbat-observant Jew) Ezra Furman isn’t shy about expressing his Jewishness in his music. But he just released his most explicitly Jewish song yet.
Furman told Consequence of Sound that “The Refugee,” which he uploaded to the SoundCloud music streaming site on Wednesday, is his “first song entirely concerned with my Jewish background and present, a song dedicated to my grandfather who fled the Nazis as well as to all of the refugees desperate for a home today.”
The song follows a character (presumably based on his Jewish grandfather) who is displaced from “frosty green Poland” (presumably during World War II) and is forced through a difficult migration, which involves “sleeping in churches” and eating grass “like a goat.”
“This is the sound of the Jew who refuses to die,” Furman sings at one point in the folky waltz, which features Eastern European-sounding string and clarinet melodies.
The song will be part of his upcoming six-song EP “Big Fugitive Life,” which is set to be released on Aug. 19 on the Bella Union record label.
Listen to the track here.
RELATED:
Ezra Furman — a gender-bending, genre-crossing, observant Jewish rocker — is the next big thing
A message from our CEO & publisher 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
