Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
The Latest
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The Schmooze A Yiddish Opera for Cuba’s ‘First National Hero’
A Monument to Hatuey in Baracoa, Cuba. Photo by Michal Zalewski. A version of this post appeared in Yiddish. In 1931, Yiddish poet, journalist and editor Ascher Penn published “Hatuey,” a 126-page epic poem about a Taíno chieftain who fought against the Spanish invasion of Cuba at the beginning of the 16th century, and who…
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The Schmooze Putting Some Punch Into the Protest Song
Crossposted from Haaretz When Mary Ocher participated in a singing competition at 14, Idan Reichel, who was working as a music arranger in the same competition, told her she would never be a singer. At 20, after hearing the same thing from a few other Israeli teachers, Ocher packed her bags and moved with her…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: The Girls Are in Trouble, but Not This Album
It is hard to believe we are only five years from klezmer-punk band Golem’s 2006 debut album, “Fresh Off Boat,” and the first time (most of us) heard Alicia Jo Rabins on a record. Since then we have gotten a follow-up from Golem (2009’s tremendous “Citizen Boris”) and a solo debut from Rabin’s new project,…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Aviv Geffen, Steven Wilson and Israeli-British Hybrid DNA
Photo by Chiko. Courtesy of Kscope Music. As far as cross-cultural collaborations go, Blackfield’s most recent album, “Welcome to My DNA,” is rather unexpected. Not because the album is particularly shocking, but for just the opposite reason — because without reading the liner notes, the album plays like that of any other band. But unlike…
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The Schmooze A Rock Opera for the ‘Memory Industry’
It’s not every day that one gets to see an opera illustrated in comics and sung by rock musicians, but happily, May 7 was one of those days. That night “Memorial City,” the latest musical theater piece by comics great (and former Forward cartoonist) Ben Katchor and composer Mark Mulcahy, had its Manhattan premiere as…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Fusion Mix-and-Match
In the late 1960s the term jazz fusion became a popular way of referencing music that borrowed heavily from both jazz and funk, or jazz and rock, or really any two genres that musicians troubled to smash together. If you hadn’t already noticed, fusion has been a dominant mode of expression in Jewish music over…
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The Schmooze Crowning the ‘King of Klezmer’
Klezmer legend clarinetist David Tarras will be center stage for the first time in decades on May 5, thanks to the efforts of klezmer violinist and ethnographic field researcher Yale Strom. Strom and his band, Hot Pstromi, will be giving a special performance of Tarras’s music — including some pieces that have never been published…
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The Schmooze Of Beastie Boys, Kafka, and the Hot Sauce Academy
Getty Images I imagine the hot sauce committee to be a studious and dour group, as dispassionate in their judgment of peppers and spices as the academy is of Red Peter the talking ape in Kafka’s “A Report to an Academy.” Which is to say, that if the Beastie Boys are not quite the heir…
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