This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Israeli Apocalypse Rock Breaks Big Stateside
The fuzzy guitars, pulsating bass,and incomprehensible lyrics intrigued me. So I looked up the song that was streaming on KEXP, the Seattle indie-rock station I broadcast at home. The band’s name seemed Finnish or Icelandic, until I realized the words were actually phonetic Hebrew. Vaadat Chirigim, it turns out, is that rarest of musical animals…
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The Schmooze Why David Broza Covers BDS Supporter Roger Waters
In early 2013 singer-songwriter David Broza spent a little over a week in an East Jerusalem recording studio working on his new album. The Israeli superstar says it has been a life-long dream to have Israeli and Palestinian musicians work together on a project. The resulting album is “East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem” (S-Curve Records), recorded in…
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The Schmooze 7 Best Classical Concerts of 2013
Of the many great classical music events this year in New York, seven with some Jewish content particularly stood out: 1: Mozart collaborated on three operas with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, who was born to a Jewish family in the Ghetto of Venice. All three are among the greatest ever written, and explore issues of…
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The Schmooze Top 5 Middle Eastern Metal Albums of 2013
At some point in the early ’90s, folk metal acts from the Middle East received the decidedly un-PC neologism, Oriental Metal. The term, implying a heady mix of thrash guitars, throaty vocals and maqam-inflected scales, fell into disuse but the relevant bands did not. In a year when the Middle East was marked with military…
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The Schmooze Top 7 Jewish Albums of 2013
“Bella Ciao” By Barbez Following up his 2007 ode to Paul Celan, Dan Kaufman writes a gothic masterpiece inspired by the ancient Roman Jewish community and the Italian Resistance to the Nazi occupation of Italy. Tracks like album opener “Et Shaare Ratzon” are swirling ahistorical melodies packed with aural hooks and haunting poetry about World…
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The Schmooze Best Experimental Jewish Music of 2013
This year, we ventured to create a set of five memorable 2013 releases that are not easily defined either as “Jewish music,” jazz, or klezmer, but represent alternative, thought-provoking musical experiments, rooted in yet transgressing Jewish musical traditions. Please note that the works below are listed in alphabetical order — there’s no ranking here. “Pillar…
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The Schmooze He Was Deaf But Now Can Sing
During a phone conversation from his home in Paris, David Serero admits that his “is kind of a Cinderella story.” That’s an understatement. Frankly, Cinderella wouldn’t believe his story. Cinderella would call it a fairy tale. Deaf almost since birth, Serero began to regain his hearing after a three-year series of surgeries starting at the…
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Israel News A Program Developed by German Police Could Help Track Down Neo-Nazis
The German police are planning to ratchet up their battle against neo-Nazism with a new computer program that can identify “forbidden songs” beloved of Germany’s far-right. The program, which is similar to the popular application Shazam, can identify “neo-Nazi” music played on Internet radio stations or at gatherings of neo-Nazi activists. It was developed by…
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