This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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News Krakow Jewish Fest Features Notable Absence: Jews
Krakow, Poland – About 13,000 people crowded the main square in the cobblestone-paved former Jewish quarter of Krakow last week for the finale of this year’s Jewish Culture Festival. The event — which is funded by the Polish government, the city of Krakow, the Friends of the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival in New York and…
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Music Woody Returns to L.A., Culture in Tow
Woody Allen will make his operatic debut in September 2008, directing Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi” at the Los Angeles Opera. It’s hard to imagine Allen feeling at home in the City of Angels (in “Annie Hall” he perfected the role of fish-out-of-water New Yorker in L.A., famously saying, “I don’t want to move to a city…
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Film & TV Borat in Rehab, Eva Mendes’s Jew Fetish and Other Tales From the MTV Movie Awards
For one night, at least, MTV may as well have been the Jewish Television Network. Yesterday’s MTV Movie Awards had an unusually large number of young, hip celebrity Jews taking center-stage. The show was hosted by comedian-of-the-moment Sarah Silverman, who, in typical faux-innocent fashion, mercilessly roasted Paris Hilton (conveniently in attendance). Silverman noted — to…
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Books Writing the Book on Klezmer
In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I’m personally indebted to Yale Strom. I keep a hardcover copy of his reference work “The Book of Klezmer: The History, the Music, the Folklore” (Chicago Review Press, 2002) on the bookshelf that rings the ceiling in my apartment. Whenever I need to check a…
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News Cabaret Act Revives Music of Warsaw
On a frigid January evening in New York City, Rebecca Joy Fletcher and Stephen Mo Hanan performed their two-person act, “Kleynkunst!: Warsaw’s Brave and Brilliant Yiddish Cabaret,” before a full house at Helen’s Restaurant, Cabaret & Piano Lounge in Chelsea, as part of a five-day-long European cabaret festival called Kabarett Fête. The title of Fletcher’s…
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Culture Matzo on the Merchandise Table
Ira Kaplan doth protest too much. The guitarist for indie rock band Yo La Tengo — a New Jersey trio known for their encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and for their jazzlike interplay — demurs when asked about his ties to Jewish tradition. “I’m not a practicing Jew,” Kaplan said, in an interview soon after…
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Culture Cruise Control
Imagine the perfect cruise — surrounded by peaceful waters, drifting past ancient towns, atmospheric music playing in the background. Now, if those waters and towns are Ukrainian, and that music you’re imagining is klezmer, have we got a cruise for you. In April 2007 (if all goes according to plan), a boat of 150 Jewish…
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Culture Beyond Tumbala, Tumbala…
In Camp Hemshekh, a Jewish socialist summer camp in Mountaindale, N.Y., where Caroline Chanin first heard Yiddish music, singing was an integral part of the program. At breakfast, in the dimly lit dining room, campers belted out popular camp tunes to the accompaniment of an aging piano; during rest hour, selected campers would rehearse the…
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