This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Monday Music: When Jews and Gypsies Play
Photo by Pawel Mazur The Other Europeans’ impressive new live album, “Splendor,” should carry the subtitle “Everything You Wanted To Know About Klezmer and Lautar Music But Were Afraid To Ask.” Would you bet on your ability to differentiate klezmer from so-called “Gypsy” music in a simple drop-the-needle listening test? Before this recording, even those…
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The Schmooze One Woman Poetry Mafia
Crossposted from Haaretz Yarona Caspi’s interest in poetry “is a meeting of souls,” says the singer and artist in a conversation about her fourth and latest album, “Mafia Shel Isha Ahat” (“One-Woman Mafia”). It is an album on which she manages to bring together her intense personality and her awareness of the pop audience through…
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The Schmooze Jewish Singer to Represent Turkey at Eurovision
Turkey’s emissary to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest — the annual multinational music competition showcasing 43 countries and wide-ranging talent levels — is a 24-year-old pop singer from the western metropolis of Izmir named Can Bonomo. Fan site EuroVisionary describes the singer-songwriter’s style as “Istanbulian music that works with tunes from Alaturca to international indie…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Deeper Than Nostalgia
Jamie Saft is far from the only musician who questions and complicates notions of cultural, musical and ethnic identity. That’s bread and butter for many of the artists featured on the Tzadik label, which has now put out six of Saft’s albums, including his latest, “Borscht Belt Studies.” Neither, on this release, does Saft clash,…
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The Schmooze Israel Classical Radio Fears for Future
Crossposted from Haaretz Editors at Israel Radio’s Voice of Music have accused the Israel Broadcasting Authority of killing off the classical music station by appointing a person to head the station who has no musical background. The editors posted statements on bulletin boards at its broadcast studios in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Thursday saying that…
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The Schmooze Hardcore Klezmer: Talking With Ramzailech
Crossposted from Midnight East. Photos by Gangi. Thirty seconds into the music bodies are moving on the dance floor, my pulse is synched to the beat, and electric guitar and drums are crashing through my bloodstream. Then the wail of the clarinet takes over my brain and I’m singing along with the band — in…
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The Schmooze Israel Song Festival To Be Revived
Crossposted from Haaretz After a more than 30-year hiatus, the Israel Song Festival will be revived this year, according to a senior Israel Broadcasting Authority source. The festival, held almost every year from 1960 to 1980, initially offered winners a cash reward. But in 1978, the top finisher was designated as Israel’s representative in the…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Chana Rothman’s Pop and Politics
Photo by Elise Warshavsky Not every singer-songwriter can sing lyrics like, “You got a big heart, sweet like a Pop-Tart, bigger than Walmart” and hope to be taken seriously. But Chana Rothman can, and she does so on the bouncy first track of her new album, “Beautiful Land.” That track, somewhat reminiscent of Kimya Dawson…
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