the KlezmerShack

We were fortunate enough to hear Josh Kun talk about Jewish music at the Ashkenaz Festival at a talk based on his book, And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost. Using album covers as signifiers, he walked us through early releases, and spent wonderful time on both black-Jewish and Latin American-Jewish fusions of eras gone by. Now his re-release team, the Idelson Society, has released a collection of music documenting Black-Jewish interactions in an era gone by: "Black Sabbath." You can hear about it on NPR:

The Secret Musical History Of... 'Black Sabbath'?

This complements a link I have been meaning to post for a couple of weeks, Exploring the Jewish influence on black American music, by Ezra Gale in the SF Weekly. Josh Kun really seems to get it.