This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
The Latest
-
The Schmooze Is Haredi Music Video Activism Misplaced?
The new single and music video titled “The Japan Song,” released March 29 and featuring prominent Hasidic singers Avraham Fried and Shloimy Daskal, is not what you might expect. Although its purpose is fundraising for relief efforts, and the video includes some footage of the tsunami, it is not a fundraiser for Japan at all….
-
The Schmooze Monday Music: Pilgrimage to Timbuktu
In geographic space the farthest city from New York is Perth, Australia, but in mental space the farthest is certainly Timbuktu. The Malian city sits on the southern border of the Sahara Desert and is so distant that schoolchildren name it as an impossible place. Dictionaries define it as “the most distant place imaginable” or…
-
The Schmooze Monday Music: Let’s Talk About Love
Is there a grouch in the world who can maintain a proper scowl while listening to French swing? There is something about the sound of this music (is it the sweet, kaleidoscopic chord changes, or the bouncy, peripatetic bass lines?) that seems to rob even the devout pessimist of any meaningful sense of gloom. Wistfulness…
-
The Schmooze Monday Music: Dancing Between the Rockets
“Rockets on the Balcony,” Omer Klein’s fourth album and his Tzadik Records debut, is also his first self-consciously Jewish record. In the liner notes, Klein explains that when John Zorn first approached him about the project, he was reluctant to make “calculated evaluations as to what counts as Jewish music and what doesn’t.” But over…
-
The Schmooze Itzhak Perlman in the Cantor’s House
It’s the Itzhak and Yitzchok show! Violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman is teaming up with cantorial superstar Yitzchok Meir Helfgot for a concert tour and recording project titled “The Soul of Jewish Music.” The inaugural concert takes place March 30 at the Saban Theatre in Los Angeles and will benefit Bet Tzedek Holocaust Survivors Justice Network….
-
The Schmooze Friday Film: Behind the Scenes of ‘Jewish Arena Rock’
“The Klezmatics are the Jewish equivalent of arena rock,” ethnomusicologist Bob Cohen deadpans early in Erik Greenberg Anjou’s documentary “The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground.” “They’re not heavy metal; they’re heavy Yiddish.” It’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek analysis calculated to make us chuckle (picture these mild-mannered, middle-aged folks head-banging in eyeliner and platform heels!) — and…
-
Culture Conducting Crowds to the Beat of His Grandparents
Michael Tilson Thomas’s grandmom had trunks in her basement. A lot of our grandmothers had stuff stacked away. But our grandmoms were not Bessie Thomashefsky. “When I used to go visit my grandmother at her apartment in Hollywood, she had trunks in her basement and that was a special treat,” said Tilson Thomas, music director…
-
The Schmooze Dance, Drink and Mayhem at Moscow’s Purim Bacchanale
For all of its charitable mishloach manot-giving and passive-aggressive gragger-shaking, Purim is hardly the tamest Jewish holiday. At its best (worst?) the celebration follows a sort of Bakhtinian carnivalesque disorder, with masks, public denunciations of the villain Haman and booze — lots of booze. With that in mind, one would expect Moscow, surely a world…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
- 2
News Meet the Jews who helped elect Zohran Mamdani
- 3
Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
- 4
Fast Forward Calling itself ‘MechaHitler,’ Elon Musk’s AI tool spreads antisemitic conspiracies
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish דער ישׂראלדיקער ייִדישער טעאַטער „ייִדישפּיל“ בײַט זײַן נאָמען The Israeli Yiddish theater ‘Yiddishpiel’ changes its name
אַחוץ פּיעסעס, מאָנאָלאָגן און רעוויוען אויף ייִדיש וועלן אויך זײַן פּראָדוקציעס אויף העברעיִש.
-
Fast Forward Woodstock, but make it Orthodox: A Jewish music festival comes to the Catskills
-
Fast Forward Alaska’s Nazi Creek renamed after 80 years, following advocacy by son of WWII veteran
-
Fast Forward Mandy Patinkin calls on Jews to reflect on Gaza war: ‘is this acceptable and sustainable?’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
