'The roadmap to world music from a Jewish slant'. We cover Klezmer and more, focusing on the edges and the sounds that express who we are now. We also provide the place for klezmorim, reputable musicians, fans, and scholars to network online.
There is an article on the last page of this issue of the Frankel Center newsletter (the University of Michigan center for Jewish Studies) of great interest to many people on this list: "Dos folk fodert sotsyale gerekhtikayt: Social Protests and Yiddish in Tel Aviv," by Shachar Pinsker.
The article concludes, describing the tent city and the protests, thus: "... More than everything else, this is a revolution of consciousness, one in which even a speech, or a demonstration poster in Yiddish are not out of place."
Since getting an iPad for my birthday, I have been trying it out as a recording device with varying success. It is more cumbersome and creates video/sound of slightly less quality than I get with the Flip camera from work. But, alas, Flips have been discontinued and the iPad is often with me, where the Flip is not. And, the iPad lets me take notes while wandering.
A couple of nights ago, I took some video of the Sukkoth gathering at Occupy Boston, then promptly lost the recording during an ill-timed maneuver on the iPad—I am still learning how to care for and feed the darn thing. Given the quality of the video at night with little illumination, this is not the loss it could have been, although I would not have minded putting the brief gathering and ceremony online.
In any event, last month I recorded most of the Klezmatics concert in Boston. Great fun. I'll start with the concert finale, a deconstructed "Ale Brider:"
At the beginning of October I tried again, this time in full daylight, and using the "Luma" iPad app, which hopefully takes some of the jitters out the recordings. (Thanks to a car that ran through a stop sign while I was bicycling to work in August, I had an encounter with the street that left me with a broken collarbone. The car did not stop after causing the accident, but the collarbone is healing. Unfortunately, it will still be a few months before it is comfortable to hold up a recording device for more than a few minutes.) So, here is Somerville's delightful "Honkfest," a celebration of street marching bands held each fall. In addition to my injury, the delight of just wandering and shmoozing got in the way of serious recording, so here is a brief taste of the afternoon (and more tastes on YouTube in my Honkfest2011 playlist)
