Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
The Latest
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The Schmooze Singing Yiddish Songs in Belarus
On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Dmitri Slepovitch writes about “Ikh vel nit ganvenen” (“I Will Not Steal”), a song he recorded in his native Belarus: I recorded “Ikh vel nit ganvenen” (“I Will Not Steal”) in Mogilev, Belarus, from Sterna Gorodetskaya, born in 1946 into the only Jewish family that got reunited…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Sephardic Culture Takes On the Club Scene
When Erez Safar started the Sephardic Music Festival in 2005, he was thinking about the future of Sephardic music. Having spent the last decade watching klezmer explode in popularity among artists like the avant-garde composer John Zorn and the Brooklyn punk band Golem, Safar realized klezmer was moving into a brave new future and was…
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The Schmooze ‘The Beatles of Palestine’ Give First Homeland Performance
Crossposted from Haaretz For decades the music band Al-asheqeen has provided a soundtrack to life in the Palestinian territories; their songs are heard at weddings, funerals, and in daily living. The band, which was created in Damascus by Palestinians from refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon, has become a symbol of national heritage and a…
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The Schmooze Striking the Right Note
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree I’ve been meaning for quite some time now to write about the Judaica Sound Archives, an online treasure trove of American Jewry’s musicological patrimony, but I couldn’t quite find the right note to strike. In the wake of the sudden and untimely passing of Debbie Friedman, whose musical contributions…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: God, the Devil, and a Couple of Sheriffs
On the new record by the Israeli quintet Fogel and the Sheriffs, Jesus packs a gun, the Pope is a woman, and the Second Coming occurs in the bedroom. One song calls the Holocaust a “soiree”; another orders a Muslim woman to “put on a burka, baby” to hide her body, from her head to…
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The Schmooze New York Philharmonic Puts On a Light and Sound Show Worthy of Creation
After listening to and viewing a rehearsal for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s presentation of “In Seven Days,” the 2008 concerto for piano and moving image by Thomas Adès and Tal Rosner being performed January 7 and 8 at Avery Fisher Hall, I was ready to become a creationist. Not that the piece works to…
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The Schmooze Old and Grey and Only in the Way
Earlier this week, Michael Wex, author of “The Frumkiss Family Business,” wrote about writing about intermarriage and being the kvetch guy. His blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on the series, please visit: I…
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The Schmooze The Wife Left Behind
On the Yiddish Song of the Week Blog, Forverts associate editor Itzik Gottesman writes about “Tunkl brent a fayer” (“A Fire Burns Dimly”), a song about an agune, a woman who was abandoned by her husband but cannot remarry: [Jacob (Yankev) Gorelik] sang “Tunkl brent a fayer” (“A Fire Burns Dimly”) in his apartment in…
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