This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Checkpoint Music
Crossposted from Haaretz The Qalandiyah checkpoint, which over the years has become increasingly fortress-like, had yet to witness such a sight. Young people streamed toward it from both sides, armed with suspicious black cases and metal poles. The cases turned out to be for musical instruments, and the poles were folding music stands. The youth…
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The Schmooze Music in the Key of Twombly
Crossposted from Haaretz Several years ago, on one of his trips to Europe, saxophonist Ariel Shibolet went to a museum and discovered the American artist Cy Twombly. “Abstract art often feels heavy,” says Shibolet, who creates abstract music, “but his drawings have a totally different feeling. They have something crispy, alive and close. I have…
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The Schmooze For Ravid Kahalani of Yemen Blues, ‘Music Is My Religion’
Crossposted from Haaretz Singer Ravid Kahalani’s apartment in the trendy Basel neighborhood of north Tel Aviv is furnished in Moroccan style, and he’s Skype-ing in English with the mother of his daughter back in Finland. Next to a black piano stands a three-string bass instrument called a guembri, and the suitcases lying partially open on…
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The Schmooze The Boy With ‘First World Problems’
Zach Katz, with his “The First World Problems Rap,” has provided a much-needed antidote to self-indulgent teen videos, like the one offered earlier this year by a bar mitzvah boy who shares his first name. (In case you missed it, “I’m Zack” by Zachary Freiman was a spectacular doozey.) The self-aware Katz belied his 17…
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The Schmooze Singer Yael Levy’s ‘Green Island in the Sea’
Crossposted from Haaretz Yael Levy launched her new album, “A Green Island in the Sea,” at the OzenBar in Tel Aviv about 10 days ago. The first half of the show was heart-rending for all the wrong reasons: Levy didn’t sing the way she should have. Her voice wasn’t calibrated, she seemed distracted, and in…
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Books Nica Rothschild, the Patron (Saint) of Jazz
NICA’S DREAM: THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF THE JAZZ BARONESS David Kastin W. W. Norton, 272 pages, $26.95 Pannonica Rothschild, or “Nica,” as she was called, tried very hard to be an upstanding member of the famous Jewish banking family. She went to the right schools, married the right man (a French baron, no less),…
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The Schmooze Punk Icon Jello Biafra Defies Fans to Come to Israel
Crossposted from Haaretz Devout listeners to Michal Niv’s program on Army Radio, Hafsakat Esser (10 a..m. Break), will never forget the voice that shouted “California Uber Alles” on her show. The queen of 1980s alternative radio, Niv often devoted airtime to punks and hardcore musicians, but even among her extreme group of fans, a place…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Shofars, Environmentalism, and Oversexed Cicadas
It goes without saying that Meira Warshauer’s “Tekeeyah (a call)” — a concerto for shofar — centers on religious themes. At the heart of the work is the pulsating call to repentance traditionally trumpeted through a ram’s horn on the High Holy Days. What’s less obvious is that Warshauer’s first symphony, the other major orchestral…
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