Frank London's
Worldwide Booty Shaking
Music Extravaganza
Carnival Party
aka "Frank London's 50th Birthday Party Blowout at DROM"

8pm: Sizzle Ohtaka and Han'nya Teikoku from Japan
9pm: Brian Mitchel Band deliver New Orleans funk
10pm: Scott Kettner & Maracata New York—Northern Brazilian carnival party
11pm: Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars
12pm: DJ Joro Boro

May 7, at DROM
85 Avenue A (btw 5th and 6th)
NYC
Cover: $15
www.dromnyc.com

One of the reasons I haven't been posting lately is that I am in a different country with intermittent internet access (and other things, like vacation and family on my mind). But, I feel obliged to mentioned some excellent eats in Beer Sheva. Tonight, we struck gold at a place called Beit Ha-ful in downtown Beer Sheva. It's at 15 Histradrut St., c. Smilansky.

We are talking about the kind of meal you get only in Israel--a huge assortment of incredible salads, ranging from coleslaw to the house special french fries, ful, humous, harif, eggplant, lemon-this, tomato-that, all incredible, with great pita, accompanied by huge skewers or platters of meat and incredible service. This is one of those down home corner places where they don't have fancy napkins or serve imported beer. The TV above our heads was apparently showing the Israeli version of "Survivors". But, incredible service and delicious food.

Of course, I warmed up by listening to Michael Winograd's new album all afternoon—this place needs some klezmer—but otherwise, a total gas.

Later this week, if all goes well, I sense the possibility of Anat Fort in Tel Aviv and some (allegedly) amazing Kurdish singer in jerusalem later in the week. We'll see.

It was only about 20 years ago, that the Austin Klezmorim recorded the definitive hipster take on tonight's story, The Big Megillah. If it's been even a year since you first heard this gem, time to listen,again. Many thanks to the band's Bill Averbach for the link.

From the Jewish-Music list, by Helen Winkler:

"Early Recordings of Jewish Music in Poland" by Michael Aylward, with accompanying introductory remarks is now available for download on my website, courtesy of Michael Aylward.

You can access it from my opening page: www.yiddishdance.com. Or directly via: www.yiddishdance.com/aylwardEarly%20Recordings.PDF (article)

Introductory remarks are available at www.yiddishdance.com/aylwardIntroduction.pdf

This article originally appeared in Polin Volume 16, 2003. Thanks to Michael Aylward for providing this article offprint.

With Purim due this week, it is time to mentionBinyomin Ginzberg's Purim CD, a very yeshivish, bouncy combo of songs appropriate to any Purim Party. The music is among the large selection available on the Jewish music download site, OySongs.

Likewise, the Jewish Music Distribution in the UK announces several new releases for Purim and the fast-approaching Passover holiday.

From Judith Cohen:

I just learned that on March 9, Samy Al-Maghribi, as Salomon Amzallag was known, passed away. He was my oud teacher in Montreal in the early 1980s. Born in Morocco in 1922, he soon became a well-known figure in Andalusian music and after emigrating to Canada, served for many years as the Cantor of Montreal's Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. After retiring, he spent several years in Israel where he worked with the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra and eventually returned to Canada. He was a very fine singer, instrumentalist, and composer, highly appreciated in both the Jewish and the Muslim worlds, and a great person. Some information about his life and music can be found here: www.wikimusique.net/index.php/Sami_El_Maghribi

From Hélène Engel:

The music lovers lost a great artist with Samy El-Maghribi. Fortunately we have great memories and a lot of recordings of him. On radio-shalom Montreal there was a special show on wednesday 12th and there will be another one on March 18th, at 8PM. Just google radio-shalom Montreal and you will be able to hear it.

In the future, there will be a couple of shows (2 or 3) going in depth into his work, actually into the different sides of his work : the popular singer, the classical singer, the cantor … and the person, also. His younger daughter, a friend of him and myself will be working on this very soon. If you have any memory or comment, you are welcome to send them directly to me, mentioning "SEM" in the title. I will gather all of them and use them for the shows.

Thank you to Judith Cohen who kept you posted about him. I was struggling with the English to announce it to you when I saw that she had done it already in a much better way than what I was doing.

Dan Peck wrote to the Jewish-Music list for Henry Sapoznik:

Klezmer Friends,

Marty Levitt, klezmer clarinetist and a one time popular Jewish band leader in New York in the 1960s died today. He was 77 and lived in Brooklyn, New York.The cause of death was lung cancer and lymphoma. Levitt came from a long line of professional Jewish musicians; he was the son on of famed klezmer trombonist Yankl "Jack" Levitt a noted Yiddish theater musician and member of the famed Boibriker Kapelle. During the 1950s and 1960s Marty Levitt together with his wife, vocalist Harriet Kane, had one of New York's most popular Jewish wedding orchestras regularly featuring an eight musician bandstand. The several LPs he recorded at this time for Tikva, Fiesta and other indie labels, picture a tuxedoed Levitt all pencil thin mustachios and horn rimmed glasses holding his clarinet at a rakish angle. Though not one of the best of the old line klezmer clarinetists, Marty Levitt commanded a unique and atypical repertoire and had a surprisingly literate knowledge of the history of klezmer music and its folklore. It was only his continual resistance to becoming part of the klezmer revival which kept him from being celebrated by a new generation of klezmer afficianados.

He is survived by a son, David, himself an outstanding jazz and klezmer trombonist.

From Hankus Netsky:

So sorry to hear about Marty—he was truly one-of-a-kind. When the "Klezmer Revival" started, he was one of the last guys on the New York scene actively playing the old repertoire—mostly because of his extensive contacts in the survivor community. His recording, "Wedding Dances," is a true standout among klezmer LPs, and he continued to record and perform throughout the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, until a calcium deposit in his fourth and fifth finger on his left hand made it impossible for him to play the clarinet. As he used to say to me, "For most musicians, their dream was to play on Broadway or at Carnegie Hall. For me, my dream was to play on Pitkin Avenue." That was a dream he more than realized—no one knew as much about the Brooklyn Jewish music scene as Marty. He will truly be missed.

Paula Teitelbaum adds the last note:

He played at our wedding in November 1985.

According to the Discographie of the German book/cd on the Klezmer Revival, von der Khupe zum KlezKamp at least a couple of his LPs, including "Bar Mitzvah Favorites" have been on CD at least at one point.

According to Wikipedia, this was the last Herbie Mann recording made. Britt, of the Nefesh Klezmer Band, spotting this back in 2001.

Chaverim,

pardon my enthusiasm, but …

I'm in love with a new CD and I just had to share it with the list. It's Herbie Mann's "Eastern European Roots". Yes, it's the same jazz flute I've loved since I first heard it as a teenager, but there is something more, a soulfulness. Mann explains in his liner notes that a brush with death made him re-examine his musical life, and he realized he had explored many other types of music but not his own Jewish musical roots—his mother is from Bucovina, Romania.

When he recovered, he traveled to Eastern Europe and this CD is the result. He's joined by other exemplary musicians, most notably Gil Goldstein on accordion (sounds to me like a chromatic button accordion) played with a moody musette sound. And Alexander Fedoriouk on cymbalom, my current instrument of choice. His style ranges from a dark, old time klezmer- sound to a jazzy gypsy swing (a la Kalman Balogh). However you classify this album (jazz, klezmer), I'm sure many list members will also enjoy it.

A couple of years ago, someone posted to the Jewish-Music mailing list asking about a version of "Miserlu" played at a football game at Foxboro Stadium. I gave the stock reply about the origins of the Miserlu dance, and dutifully guessed that the version played was that classic of California surf rock, the Dick Dale "Miserlu." So far, so good. But this morning, following another excellent Balkan night (more, anon, time permitting, in another post), I noticed a rather excellent email that one of Balkan Night's organizers, Henry Goldberg, wrote explaining the origins of the tune, itself. It seems worth presenting to a larger audience:

… Agreed, the song does not have Klezmer origins, but, not to put too fine a point on it—that posting on EEFC provided by Ari describes how the DANCE was invented in 1945 in Pittsburgh and spread from there.

The music had been recorded earlier. There are many other informative posts on this topic to the EEFC mailing list (which can be searched from that same link) but Wikipedia more efficiently says:

[added 3/16/08] And I covered this in even more detail last year, with information supplied by Andy Tannenbaum. Take a look at The roots of the tune, Miserlu

In Why Klezmer?, then college-student Inna Barmash, co-founder of the Klez Dispensers wrote an article describing her attraction to the music form. This article was originally published in Princeton University's Nassau Weekly in 1999. What's especially neat is that here it is, almost a decade later. Barmash has extended her reach from klezmer to other Eastern European music, but she is still involved and still a klezmer.

Keith Wolzinger has been reviewing prolifically, again. This is a good thing. He covers a fascinating disk put out by local (well, Western Massachusetts) musician Brian Bender, featuring some of my all-time favorite accompaniests (you know, folks like Alicia Svigals, Frank London, Stu Brotman, KCB's Grant Smith, NY percussion wizard Raquy Danziger, …): Brian Bender & Little Shop of Horas / Eyn Velt, 2008. Not content to stop there, Keith crosses the pond and discovers Hilda Bronstein / Sings Yiddish Songs Old and New, 2007. Hilda is accompanied by that wizard of UK klezmer, Merlin Shepherd, and his quartet. Not a bad pair of CDs to hear, at all. Read all about them here, or on Keith's blog

Glenn Tamir posts this clip to YouTube, with this explanation:

Just went to a great show at a club called Barbi in Tel Aviv. Max Romeo ("War Inna Babylon") played a great show.

Here's a little clip of "Ska Ska Ska" into "Wings of a Dove"

Enjoy!

Keith Wolzinger announces Klezmer Podcast 30, featuring an interview with Eric and Mindy Zaidins, and Kenny Green, of the Westchester Klezmer Program, www.klezkidz.org. There are also new reviews, which will be up on the KlezmerShack soon.

You can also catch Keith's MySpace blog where he posts about the cancellation of the Balkan Beat Box U.S. tour. He was planning to see their concert and interview them for the Podcast. He has also posted an upcoming concert by Odessa/Havana.

From Flory Jagoda:

Please join me for a splendid afternoon of Jewish Sephardic music on

Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 4:00 pm.

The one hour concert will be at Congregation Etz Hayim, the synagogue that has been my religious home since I first came to America in 1946.

I was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Before the madness of the Second World War, 14,000 Jewish people called Sarajevo home and it was known throughout Europe as /Chico Yerushalayim/ (Little Jerusalem) for its thriving Sephardic community. Today, sadly, there are only 160 Jewish survivors living there and most of them are elderly and ill.

They need our help and I am committed to sending them the help that they need.

To Buy Tickets and/or make a donation, please contact:
Congregation Etz Hayim, 2920 Arlington Blvd, Arlington, VA 22204
703.979.4466 / fax: 703.979.4458
www.etzhayim.net

Checks can be made to: Congregation Etz Hayim - Sarajevo Benefit Fund
Tickets are $20, with a discount of $5 off for seniors and students.
Children 12 and under are free. Please reserve your tickets in advance by March 31st .

In a wonderfully well-written article, the Forward's David Kaufman covers "Jewgrass," from Margot Leverett's Klezmer Mountain Boys, to the Orthodox Sinai Mountain Boys, to the recently-reviewed-on-these-pages, Mare Winningham.

Check out O, Landsman, Where Art Thou? from Wednesday's paper.

I had the good fortune to catch Tim Sparks last night at a short (hour and a half) concert following a guitar workshop, in Lexington, MA. Although I have been a fan of Sparks since his work in the 1970s with a jazz group called Rio Nido, I had never seen him live. I was in for a treat.

Consider that the music I love best next to klezmer is the blues. Consider that one of Sparks' early memories is of Doc and Merle Watson jamming in a parking lot at a bluegrass confab decades ago. Like my wife, he is a native North Carolinian. So, if I then tell you that the set ranged from Elizabeth Cotten's "Victory Rag" through Flory Jagoda, John Zorn (albeit, a rather melodic John Zorn), and ended with Roy Orbison, you won't be surprised if I say that I was in heaven. If you have heard any of his Tzadik recordings, several reviewed on the KlezmerShack, you know the breadth and incredible qualities of his Jewish repertoire.

We were in a small guitar shop—maybe 30 or 50 people crowded in around the corner where he performed, unamplified. We all had great seats to watch the fingers fly. Like Doc Watson and Elizabeth Cotten, Sparks has a warm, friendly guitar style that is belied by the speed with which he picks at notes, leaving the listener breathless and in awe. And then he does it some more. The patter between the songs was also lovely. At one point, following a blues by Eubie Blake he talked about Naftule Brandwein and mentioned that in 1917 you could have listened to Blake up in Harlem and then taken the subway down to the Lower East Side and caught Brandwein. Quite a neat thought. He introduced one song by talking of the Hasidic (I have always thought primarily a Lubavitch-specific tale, although a primal way that many of us now think of Judaism and of life) story about the breaking of the original light (אור) into (אֹר), and the tikun olam we do to bring those original sparks of light together. It was rather neat listening to someone non-Jewish use a Jewish creation myth to describe how the pieces of a song that he was about to play came together. On the other hand, the respect reflected in this story carried over to all of Sparks' stories about the musicians, and the music that he was playing, and was reflected by the warmth of his playing.

This was a very special concert. I'm sorry it took me 30 years to hear Tim Sparks a first time. It would be most upsetting to have to wait that long to catch him again. If you are in NYC, he's playing there tonight. He'll be in Philadelphia with Jon Madof on Saturday night.

You can also get a book of Sparks' Jewish music transcriptions and tablature, Neshamah. He also has individual pieces of music for sale on the same site.

Just in time for the official release of the new, highly-anticipated Veretski Pass CD, Trafik, I have posted Keith Wolzinger's review of same. Keith also did a podcast of the band, recorded last summer.

Other new-to-the-KlezmerShack reviews by Wolzinger include:

• Ed Goldberg and the Odessa Klezmer Band / Who Stole the Kishka?!, 2006

• PHP / Hodu, 2008

• Red Hot Chachkas / Spice it Up!, 2007

Enjoy!

One of the themes of my recent reviewing concerns how much incredible music is coming from Eastern Europe. This week, as I double my output from last week, I have managed to tackle two of the most urgent CDs from my "review me now!" table. Alex Kontorovich was born in the former Soviet Union, but has grown up here in the States. While gathering a PhD in math in his spare time, he has also been one of the most exciting of the young musicians who have grown up since the revival. In Kontorovich's case, this means cooking up a delightful stew that melds klezmer with avant garde jazz in "born native" ways that older members of the Radical Jewish Music crowd can't do. His first solo CD, on Europe's "Chamsa" label is exciting, delightful, and features some of the other exciting leaders of this youthful surge. Check out Alex Kontorovich / Deep Minor and see what I mean.

In another mode, entirely, the most recent CD by the Polina Shepherd Vocal Experience manages to use traditional (and "traditional art song") forms to set a plethora of Yiddish poetry to music for the first time. The album is a celebration of vocal pyrotechnics, and a thorough-going pleasure, and demonstrates the originality of grounding of another artists born in the former Soviet Union (now residing in the UK). It is impossible not to love this CD, The Polina Shepherd Vocal Experience / Baym Taykh. As I wrote earlier in the Alex Kontorovich review, you can't have my copy so you'll just have to get your own. (Even my wife has her own copy, despite the fact that both of us share an itunes library!)

By rights I should ignore this rather good article in All About Jazz by Elliott Simon, our usual suspect. If I could stifle enough publicity, there would still be tickets at the box office when I roll in Monday week, hoping for a break in a long car trip from Baltimore. But that would be wrong. And the article, of course, is excellent. I long for the day when lesser-known, excellent avant garde music goes to Standing Room Only and beyond (I am avoiding the term "sell out" for obvious reasons). (John Zorn, given a small-enough venue in a major city, will always sell out. But everyone else?)

Find out what I'm talking about in this instance by reading Ayelet Rose, Anat Fort and Michael Winograd in Philadelphia, by Elliott Simon, posted 2/24/08.

There are a few things that are certain in the small area of the universe covered by the KlezmerShack. One of those certainties is that if Christian Dawid is involved with a project, I am very likely to put any resulting CD on my "permanent rotation" list. I have noticed this a lot in the last few months as I struggle to find time to review CDs, any CD that I like. Over time, some CDs drop off the "immediate" table. The CD by the most recent band with which Dawid is involved is one that I continue to listen to non-stop: Konsonans Retro / a podolian affair. In this case, there is a happy end. There is a review, and the CD is even still available! Let me encourage you to get your own copy. I'm not loaning you mine.

Posted to the Jewish-Music mailing list:

Below is a link to Mystic Seaport Museum's call for papers. Papers based on music of the sea, influenced by the sea or seafaring, emigration, immigration. Many ethnic groups have been represented although England tends to be favored because of all the sea shanties. There must be something Jewish that could be a good fit for the symposium and the Sea Music Festival which would include Jewish music if a relevant paper was selected.

Mystic Seaport Seeking Paper Proposals for "Music of America and the Sea", Symposium to be part of the Museum's 29th Annual Sea Music Festival

Songlines Magazine, one of the remaining primarily-print music magazines (the refusal to get all content online and accessible is all the more puzzling with the announcement this week that No Depression is giving up the print ghost), gives The Polina Shepherd Vocal Experience / Baym Taykh a "4 star" review, in an article by Helen Beer. This is frustrating, of course, because we can only link to the magazine and encourage you to find a copy. But here is a paragraph from the review:

Polina Shepherd is a formidable all-round musician: a composer, pianist, singer and Yiddish choir leader from the former Soviet Union, who now resides in the UK. Baym Taykh (By the River), featuring the vocal quartet Ashkenazim, is innovative in its enormous range of musical expression. This CD explores tightly arranged four-part singing, voice styles which mirror instrumental ornamentation alongside more fluid choral experimentation. Solo voices and vocal duos weave in and out of the quartet, with or without accompaniment (piano, saxophone, clarinet, guitar, double-bass). Shepherd's compositions are highly original and sensitive musical settings of interesting, lesser- known Yiddish poems.

The indefatigable Helen Winkler posted this announcements to the Jewish-Music mailing list:

Cantor Joseph Levine has translated excerpts from Cahan's Yiddish articles about the Yiddish dance songs and you can read the English translation at:

www.yiddishdance.com/cahan%20dancesong%20english%20art.pdf

or via the dance-song page, www.yiddishdance.com/tantslieder.html (original Yiddish can be accessed from this page).

oySongs is proud to announce the addition to our catalog of DAN NICHOLS & EIGHTEEN'S ENTIRE SHEET MUSIC CATALOG. Rick's immensely popular music is now available in Scorch format - in the key of your choice, right out of your printer!

DAN NICHOLS & EIGHTEEN
Eighteen is Modern Jewish Rock. For centuries, Jewish themes and values have been communicated through music. Today's Jewish youth hunger to hear those themes through music that speaks directly to them. Eighteen answers this need uniquely by setting the joy, wonder and excitement of Judaism to Modern Rock sound (think Third Eye Blind, Barenaked Ladies, etc.) with which today's Jewish youth identify … MORE

"Songs of Life" Festival commemorates Bulgarian rejection of Nazi antisemitism during WWII

"The Songs of Life Festival" will be held in Israel and Bulgaria from Nov 21 - Dec 1, 2008. The festival will feature Sacred Service by Ernest Bloch.

The festival marks the 65th anniversary of the heroic rescue of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews during World War II and serves as a celebration of the preservation of life.

Individual performers as well as choirs are invited to perform in the festival. Performers will sing Bloch s Sacred Service in Bulgaria and Israel. The 12-day itinerary also allows for individual presentations by guest choirs and opportunities for sightseeing and guided tours. Auditors are also invited to attend the festival and participate in the tours.

Please join us in this celebration of thanksgiving that will impact generations to come. www.SongsOfLife.org

Most weeks, the English-language, Forward resembles nothing so much as one's local Jewish newspaper, albeit allegedly national or international in scope, and mostly aware of New York City. It eschews controversy, espouses political opinions that would have been safe 50 years ago, and one is continually reminded in reading it that Abe Cahan was a social democrat, not actually a socialist.

Some weeks, however, the newspaper covers an unusual amount of significant cultural activity, and the past two weeks have seen a series of stories worth reading, both expected and unexpected. This week in particular sees a plethora of Yiddish-related features in the "Arts and Culture section. Among them:

• In "Beatle Mania: British Invasion Gets a Yiddish Translation," Josh Richman features Bay Area-based Yiddish singer and educator Gerry Tenney. Known for years (among more significant accomplishments like always having a sound system we could use for benefits) for his Yiddish translations of rock 'n' roll standards (my favorite, "in der shtill fun dem nacht"), someone recently posted to YouTube video clip of the Beatles singing "A Hard Days Night," but replaced the original soundtrack with Tenney's Yiddish version. So, now Tenney gets some deserved recognition. This is a good thing.
• "Songbook Recaptures Lost Melodies, by Alexander Gelfand, publicizes the recently-released Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive.
• Gelfand makes it a double-header with his article on December's Yiddish Dance symposium finally seeing print: "Symposium Seeks to Save Yiddish Dance
• In "Yelling Melodiously, Rachel Ament does a lovely article on the "Shondes," who have recently released a CD, "The Red Sea."

A few months ago I got the then current (Fall/Winter 2007) issue of a new, relatively edgy Jewish cultural magazine called "Zeek." Featuring photography, poetry, and both a CD and several articles on "Music, Art, and the World," the magazine provided a window onto new Jewish music, most of which I had, at best, vaguely heard of. There was an article by Basya Schaechter, of Pharaoh's Daughter, and the words to the Tipex Eurovision entry, "Push the button" (along with an article about Israel, Eurovision, and this particularly controversial entry). Another article claimed, "Piyyut is Jewish Soul Music." The CD (what an anachronism for an online magazine!?!), curated by Jew*School founder Mobius and others, contained cuts by rappers Y-Love and Sagol 59, along with cuts by Pharaoh's Daughter, Juez, Roberto Rodriguez, the aforementioned Tipex (oops, after legal threats, that is now "Teapacks" in transliteration), as well as Silver Jews, Chana Rothman, and others about whom I know next to nothing.

It's sort of humbling to have spent a decade or so claiming to be writing about cutting edge Jewish music and then see someone else not just have a different take on bands that are significant, but present so many bands about whom I know nothing. (The reverse is also true. I would have valued this CD more if there were some Deep Minor, or Later Prophets, or Rashanim, or Hazanos, or Strauss-Warschauer or any of a host of bands/musicians that are neither Israeli nor NewYorkish, but are blowing away old ideas of what "Jewish Music" means.). But then, if you went over to the hasidish Jewish-Music list (not the older list of the same name that I host) you'd find yet another repertoire and list of cutting-edge musicians. If we can't even bring the musics together, what are we to do about the rest of our lives?

In the meantime, hie to the Zeek website, www.zeek.net and sample the articles, catch the latest from the magazine, and help keep them going by ordering your own copy of this rather marvellous collection—it may be as new and wonderous to you as it largely was to me.

I just got word of this late last night, and reservations have to be made today (or presumably, at the door on Sunday, but this is a fantastic event!

HOT, HIP AND HEYMISH
with the Queen of Yiddish Soul
Congregation Sinai presents
ELEANOR REISSA SINGS YIDDISH SOUL
Piano Accompaniment by GRANT STURIALE

DIRECT FROM A SOLD OUT RUN AT THE HOUSEMAN THEATRE IN NY!
Sunday, February 24th at 2:00 PM at Congregation Sinai, 1532 Willowbrae Avenue in San Jose

Tickets for 2pm Eleanor Reissa performance are $36. each, in support of her brother's San Jose shul. For reservations and more information, please contact the Sinai office (1532 Willowbrae Avenue, San Jose or 408-264-8542). CDs will be available for purchase at the concert as well. Reservations required by February 22nd.

Ezra Glinter sent this post to the Jewish-Music list:

Hi folks -

Our friend SoCalled is up for a Montreal International Music Initiative award, and you can influence the results by voting online at www.mimimtl.com.

I say, vote early, and vote often! Voting ends Mar 1, 2008.

From the people who gave us an amazing latke recipe (don't worry; I'll repeat it come Hanuka again), the world's best version of the Purim story, and the Flounder Blues, comes a new video series on YouTube: Play along with the Austin Klezmorim (complete with music on your computer screen). Here's the world-famous Zeltser Vasser:

Catch the whole series, or subscribe to it on Bill Averbach's YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/billaverbach