This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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Music Hip-Hop Violinist Miri Ben-Ari: A Role Model for Our Daughters
Miri Ben-Ari, the Israeli “hip-hop violinist” who has played with Jay-Z and Alicia Keys and who recently was honored by Michelle Obama at the White House this week, has single-handedly turned the violin into a cool instrument. It’s wonderful to have a glamorous female role model who has mastered music. While “Tiger Mother” Amy Chua…
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The Schmooze Making Music That’s Not Disgusting
Courtesy Fatpossum Records Having launched their self-titled debut album in February and now embarking on an American tour, British indie-rock band Yuck are causing quite a stir. A successful stint playing to crowds at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas last month generated a great deal of conversation, particularly in the blogosphere. On…
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The Schmooze The Secret History of Women’s Klezmer
A new radio drama titled “The Witches of Lublin” is being offered to public radio stations as a Passover special. Written by Ellen Kushner, Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom, the hour-long production features original klezmer music by Strom and the handiwork of Long Island-based audio drama producer Sue Zizza. The cast includes the prolific audiobook…
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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….
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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….
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