I was pleased to see a profile in the New York Times on July 20 of the unusual cantorial-music-aficionado-turned-audiophile-sound-engineer Mendel Werdyger. Werdyger is the proprietor of Mostly Music, one of the last bastions of old school Jewish culture in New York City. While you can certainly buy the standard schlock recordings of Hasidic boys choirs…
Eclecticism is a virtue too often touted by musicians and critics. Reviews and press releases formulaically repeat the cliché that “artist x blends elements of genre y with style z.” While this may be relevant to the archivists amongst us, such statements really say very little about the quality or authenticity of the music in…
As a bit of a New York chauvinist, the intensity of the San Francisco art scene initially surprised me. The city is a delight to perform in. The crowds are fantastic and intelligent and surprisingly attuned to new Jewish culture. This affinity for experimentation with tradition was very much on display last Saturday night at…
The Forward has a Tony Award nominee in its midst. The nominations were announced today, and among those up for Broadway’s top honor is Sahr Ngaujah — nominated for his leading role in the musical “Fela!” about the life of the Nigerian afrobeat musician Fela Kuti. As you may remember, Sahr worked with Forward artist-in-residence…
Smith — the online magazine that brought you the six word story — now brings you the 90-headed Harvey Pekar beast. To celebrate Harvey Pekar’s 70th birthday, their “Pekar Project” was to ask a number of artists to draw his head at 70 as a surprise present. Originally there were 70, natch, but so many…
If Arab club music, Israeli hip-hop and klezmer had a ménage à trios, its love child might sound something like Balkan Beat Box. Joining musical genres and artists across political spectrums the group aims to erase political borders through music saying, “our ears don’t have them, why should we?” The group blends musical influences from…
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