This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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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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Culture How Authentic Is ‘Porgy and Bess’?
George Gershwin was insecure. He never showed it at high-society parties, where he could always be found perched at the nearest piano like a king on his throne. (He played incessantly. Once, when Gershwin wondered aloud if his music would be performed in 100 years, his friend Oscar Levant quipped, “It will be if you’re…
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The Schmooze Sephardic Music Festival Diary
This was the first time I went to the Sephardic Music Festival. Now in its seventh year, the festival held shows in New York from December 20 to 27, everywhere from 700-person capacity clubs to synagogue basements. I went to five concerts — mostly in the Village — and took notes. December 20: The Mast,…
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The Schmooze Singer Yaffa Yarkoni Dies at 86
Crossposted from Haaretz Yaffa Yarkoni, one of Israel’s greatest and best-loved singers, passed away January 1 in Tel Aviv at the age of 86, following a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Lyricist Avi Koren, a close friend of the singer’s for 45 years, recalled yesterday that Yarkoni, an Israel Prize laureate, once said to him: “Look…
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