The duo, 2/5 of the Cleveland world music band, Harmonia (as well as members of the original Budowitz) will be playing a wild array of Eastern European folk music: balkan, Rom, klezmer.

Boston Balkan music fans will know Walt from his many appearances at Balkan night. Steven, of course, is renowned for his Eastern European klezmer roots recording with Zev Feldman, Khevrisa, as well as his more recent, and stunning release, Stempenyu's Dream.

This is likely to be the most fun you can have on a week night any time soon. I intend to bring my copy of the Shalom Aleichem story after which Steven named his band for autographing ;-). Do please help spread the word.

Jews and Gypsies: The "Others" in European Music

What I find very interesting is that, for the first subject of her new column, Gruber touches on Texas country music icon, Kinky Friedman. Heh. It was only a few decades ago that I was starting a multi-lingual newspaper in Jerusalem. I needed an editorial. So, as the October War changed history around me, my first published newspaper column was on, um, Kinky Friedman and how the Israeli Knesset would react if he carried out his threat to concertise in Israel.

Gruber has far more interesting things to say as she discourses on "From klezmer to country: Linking the soundtracks". Check it out!

hi, well, it wasn't called LadinoBus, but that's what it was—I'm just back in Madrid from a couple of weeks hanging out on a bus careening through Turkey with a bunch of Sephardim mostly in their 70s and 80s, speaking Ladino (which is what most of them have resignedly taking to calling it these days; it isn't what any of them said at home) and visiting the cities they or their parents were born in; then a week in Bulgaria mostly with Sephardim as well, in their case mostly resisting the use of the term "Ladino" ("we don't care what they've decided in Turkey or Israel; Ladino isn't what is spoken"). I was on the Turkey trip as a sort of domesticated ethnomusicologist, and it was quite fascinating to see what memories of songs (and stories, recipes, proverbs etc ) the trip stirred up, between the places themselves, the interaction with others on the bus, and the interaction with Sephardim who had stayed in these cities all along.…

Photos of the trip are available on Flickr

Get the whole scoop at www.bikher.org/+calendar#2008-07-06

From Leon Blank's website, www.klezmer.se:

"I grew up in Poland in a Jewish family with Yiddish as my parents main language, which means that I have a good passive knowledge of Yiddish but I was not interested in learning to speak it when I was a youngster. Even while attending the Jewish primary school as a boy, my contact with Jewish literature was through the Polish language. As a teenager I attended many summer camps organized by the Jewish Cultural Association in Poland. We sang Yiddish songs, danced around the camp-fire, and felt that we could be ourselves as young Jews, for a time. … In the middle of 1960s, I came to Sweden and wanted to continue my competition dances but found it difficult to find a partner. So I started with folk dances, both Swedish and international.… I met the American group Klezmorim at a folk music festival in Falun, Sweden, some seventeen years ago. It was like a spark igniting! I realized that this was my music.… I have started giving workshops in traditional Jewish dances for interested dance-instructors in Sweden. In the year 2000 I have started the Swedish Klezmer Association.… [More]

For dance videos, see his website, www.klezmer.se/dance_videos.htm ]]> http://www.klezmershack.com/archives/006955.html http://www.klezmershack.com/archives/006955.html Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:26:55 -0500 It was mother's day. In our family, that meant an opportunity to gather the youngest son and travel out to the National Yiddish Book Center, where this year, the featured band was Michael Winograd's Klezmer Ensemble. The weather was perfect. In fact, it was tempting to sit out in the orchard and watch the birds, enjoy the sun. But, inside we went.

It was my first chance to hear Winograd perform material from his latest CD, Bessarabian Hop. For the occasion he also brought in a singer from New York City, a cantor named Judith Berkson. Amazing voice. As was the case with Winograd's earlier band, Khevre, the songs he chose are newer ones, not the usual golden oldies. We started off with Josh Waletzky's "tantsn kales" (Brides are Dancing). By the time the afternoon was over, my notes show songs by Arkady Gendler and Beyle Schaechter Gottesman, as well. As Winograd said about Gottesman (which could have been applied to any of the material), "wicked in a good way, if you know what I mean."

The music was superb. Patrick Farrell's accordion went from Irish to French to New Orleans in seconds. It's rare to see musicians having as much fun playing such complex, sometimes serious music. We also got the real test. Would an audience consisting primarily of older people dig the new stuff? I guess so. In the middle of one of Winograd's introductions, one visitor exclaimed that he had to bring the band to her town, Saratoga Springs. And, at the conclusion of the concert as we drifted out, with the band, to enjoy the sunshine, it appeared as though almost everyone in attendance had lined up to purchase a CD. (It's an excellent CD, by the way. And, I forgot, the reason I bring all of this up months later is to announce that I finally have a simple review of the CD up, myself, to help spread the word. "Bessarabian Hop." It's the new dance/CD craze and a must-have.

Post Columnist Starts Jewish Music Project, by Ezra Glinter, The Forward, Thu. Mar 20, 2008

Charles Krauthammer knows his way around the written word. But next month, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist and his wife, artist Robyn Krauthammer, will unveil a project devoted to the music note. Pro Musica Hebraica, a new Washington-based organization spearheaded by the couple, will be devoted to highlighting historically neglected works of Jewish art music as well as commissioning new works.

more …

Raanana, Israel , 08 October 2007
Vira Lozinsky

The Festival has now posted segments from several of the performances at www.dni-kultury-zydowskiej.info/en_main.html. The "Next" icon in the Windows Media Player applet will cycle through the segments, which each run about 5 minutes. All performers deserve hearing, of course. The final portion of the Other Europeans, that Ruth Ellen Gruber posted yesterday, is included in the "official" feed. Would that we could have seen today's Shalom on Szeroka Street.

The project is a collaborative effort of the Yiddish Summer Weimar, the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival and the KlezMORE festival in Vienna. Driving force behind it is Alan Bern. For details of the project, see www.the-other-europeans.eu/project.htm

Yiddish Summer Weimar kicks off next weekend with a 3-day "other Europeans" symposium.

Günther Schöller notes:

The internet radio station emap.fm broadcasts both Vienna concerts:

The concert of the "Yiddish Music Project" is on July 7th, starting at 9 pm local time, that's 3 pm in New York. The concert of the "Roma Music Project" is on July 8th, same time.

Both concerts should also be available as stream on demand afterwards, but I'm not 100% sure.