This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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Opinion I’m Here To Perform Yiddish Music — Not Cater to Your Idea of Blackness
In case I’ve ever given you occasion to think otherwise, I’m black. My parents are black, and their parents (may they live to 120 years) are black as well, though they were not always so; they were previously “colored.” My three brothers happen to be black, as is basically mayn gantse mishpokhe, my whole family….
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Culture Meet the Top 11 Jewish Sellout Artists
It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock ’n’ roll, as some wise man once said; and even once you get there, you may be waiting awhile for the promised rewards to start rolling in. While there’s a long tradition of criticizing musicians for “selling out” when they release music with…
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Life The Tax Lawyer Who is Reinventing Jewish Music as Brazilian Song
“Raizes” is not exactly “My Yiddishe Samaba Mama” — but it is close. “Raizes” — Portuguese for roots — is the newest album from Nicole Borger, a woman whose background is as unique as her music: Jewish songs such as “Abi Gezunt” and “Shlof Mayn Feigele” sung to a Brazilian beat. Borger — she records…
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Opinion Help Us Find The Best New Voices in Jewish Music
I came of age with a guitar in hand. As anyone who has heard me play knows, I have scarcely progressed beyond the fundamental G-C-F notes that I taught myself in high school, as my friends and I happily wasted many hours pretending to be Carole King and Joni Mitchell, when in fact we sounded…
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The Schmooze Hasidic Stars Bring Yiddish Soul to Central Park
It’s as if the rain knew to stop precisely at 6 o’clock. After one of the wettest days of the month, the sky turned from gray to blue, the clouds parted for the last hour of Tuesday sun, and Yiddish Soul took the stage at Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield. The concert, a showcase of cantorial…
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The Schmooze The Secret Jewish History of Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman, one of the greatest musical innovators of the 20th century and the man who coined the term “free jazz,” died this morning in Manhattan of cardiac arrest. He was 85. A saxophonist, composer and bandleader, Coleman, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2007 for his album, “Sound Grammar,” began playing jazz…
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Music Violinist Completes Father’s Piece Cut Short by Nazis
In Raanana, Israel, Eugene Drucker’s brown eyes welled with tears as he finished a rendition of Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, which his father began 80 years prior in Germany, only to be cut short by anti-Semitic Nazi policy. Accompanied by the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, the 63-year-old, says his father, Ernest Drucker,…
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Fast Forward Jewish, Arab Youths Promote Harmony in Israel Through Music
Arab and Jewish students in Israel are trying to bridge the gap between their two communities one note at a time through classical music programs that bring together some of the country’s best musicians. The Polyphony Foundation, which was created in 2011 by New York residents Deborah and Craig Cogut and artistic director Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar,…
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Yiddish אַ היסטאָרישע פֿאָטאָ וואָס פֿאַרקערפּערט די כּלי־זמר באַנײַונגA historic photo that encapsulates the klezmer revival
אין 2007 האָט דער מוזיקער יעל סטראָם פֿאַרזאַמלט די גדולים פֿון ביידע דורות לטובֿת אַ פֿאָטאָ אינעם איסט סײַד.
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Books How an ‘unlikely rabbi’ went from Korea to Colbert
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Yiddish אַ ליבע צװישן צװײ ייִדישע דיכטער אין ניו־יאָרק A love affair between two Yiddish poets in New York City
ראַשעל װעפּרינסקיס ראָמאַן „דאָס קרײצן פֿון די הענט“ אַנטפּלעקט די אינטימקייט פֿון דער ייִדישער באָהעמישער סבֿיבֿה מיט 100 יאָר צוריק
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Opinion It’s time for the pro-Palestinian movement to make a radical change
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