This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
The Latest
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The Schmooze Yo La Tengo’s New Groove
The fuzzed out dulcet tones of Yo La Tengo ring out on “Fade,” the band’s 13th studio album in a long and storied career that stretches nearly 30 years. Proudly hailing from Hoboken, New Jersey, the trio is composed of guitarist Ira Kaplan, his wife and drummer Georgia Hubley, and bassist James McNew, all of…
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The Schmooze Setting ‘Yellow Ticket’ to Music
Klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals has experience scoring documentary and feature films. But earlier this year she faced an unusual challenge when she was approached by the Washington Jewish Music Festival to score a 1918 feature-length silent film called “The Yellow Ticket.” Unlike other scoring jobs, where her focus was mainly on heightening viewers’ experience of…
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The Schmooze Forward Fives: 2012 in Music
In the annual Forward Fives selection we celebrate the year’s cultural output with a series of deliberately eclectic choices in music, performance, exhibitions, books and film. Here we present five of our favorite Jewish music releases of 2012. Feel free to argue with and add to our selections in the comments. Sarah Aroeste, “Gracia” The…
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Fast Forward Ravi Shankar Dies at 92
Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar, who helped introduce the sitar to the Western world through his collaborations with The Beatles, died in Southern California on Tuesday, his family said. He was 92. Shankar, a three-time Grammy winner with legendary appearances at the 1967 Monterey Festival and at Woodstock, had been in fragile health for…
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Culture Deck The Halls With Boughs of Challah
A Jewish music preservation group sets out to make the definitive Hanukkah compilation and ends up with an album dripping with Christmas cheer. That’s not just a humdrum holiday punch line — it’s also an accurate description of the genesis of the Idelsohn Society’s December release, “‘Twas the Night Before Hanukkah: The Musical Battle Between…
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The Schmooze Guitar Pedals and Goat Strings
Shanir Blumenkranz’s extensive contribution to the world of radical Jewish music can only be compared to Robbie Shakespeare’s formative influence on reggae. Blumenkranz plays on numerous projects issued by the Tzadik label — so many of them, in fact, that his recognizable style of bass playing is virtually inseparable from the sound has come to…
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The Schmooze Latin Rhythms for Tired Feet
On Friday afternoon I walked from my home in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn to 34th Street in Manhattan. From there I caught a train uptown to Symphony Space to see Arturo O’Farrill and his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, with assorted guests, blend Latin rhythms with Jewish melodies. My feet ached when I got to…
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The Schmooze Master of the Jewish Renaissance
The notion of a European “renaissance” in the 14th through 17th centuries has grown more problematic in recent decades, challenged by historians of many stripes. They include those who emphasize cultural continuities, as well as those who draw attention to stagnation in science and mathematics during that period of supposed reawakening. Still, nowhere is it…
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