Music – Page 19

Alt-neu klezmer sound

Shtreiml and Ismail Fencioglu will play at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, as well as concerts on Vancouver and Salt Spring islands. (photo from Vancouver Folk Music Festival)

Shtreiml and Ismail Fencioglu will be right at home among the top talent that will gather at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival July 17-19. As did their previous recordings, the group’s fourth CD, Eastern Hora, received critical acclaim – it also resulted in the band’s nomination as group of the year in the 2014 Canadian Folk Music Awards.

Shtreiml is composer, pianist and harmonica player Jason Rosenblatt; trombonist Rachel Lemisch, originally from Philadelphia, who met Rosenblatt at KlezKanada (the couple dated long-distance for a few years, marrying in 2004); drummer Thierry Arsenault; bassist Joel Kerr; and composer, oud player and vocalist Ismail Fencioglu, who harkens from Istanbul.

Rosenblatt met Fencioglu a couple of years after Shtreiml was formed. The two played together at Festival du Monde Arabe in 2004.

The festival’s artistic director, Joseph Nakhlé, is “very forward-thinking, and he wanted the festival to be “more inclusive and, of course, Jewish people have had a presence in the Arab world for thousands of years, so he wanted to have a Jewish group,” Rosenblatt told the Independent in a phone interview from Montreal. While Shtreiml is not a Mizrahi or Sephardi group by any stretch, he said, Nakhlé wanted to add another element of the Middle East, “so he introduced us to Ismail, and we started this collaborative project.

“The first concert, we played all traditional tunes … traditional Jewish or traditional Turkish melodies, and we’ve just been working ever since at creating our own music. He writes music for the group, I write music for the group, and we created this hybrid sound.”

Rosenblatt attributes the success of Shtreimel to several factors. “First of all, I think when we perform live, it’s engaging in the sense that … you have the instrumentation that people don’t see very often … it’s instruments that people aren’t necessarily familiar with … so, to see someone from Turkey playing the oud and also singing in a style (microtonal), getting the notes in between the notes, I think that’s interesting.”

Another factor, and Rosenblatt said he never thought he would describe the band in this way, but “people like to see an Orthodox Jew and a Muslim playing together. He’s a secular Muslim and I don’t make a secret that I’m an Orthodox Jew, I wear kippa on stage, but I think there’s something heartwarming about it.” The two have been friends for a long time now, and they still get along really well, said Rosenblatt.

And, of course, there’s the music. “We try to stay away from cliché compositions … and, if we do play something that’s super-traditional, we try to add our own flavor, our own spin on it.”

Rosenblatt grew up in a musical family.

“Jewish music was always in the house,” he said, “but the main form of music that my parents listened to was folk and blues, early jazz, that type of thing. But we always had klezmer greats, Dave Tarras, Naftule Brandwein, somewhere in the background; Yossele Rosenblatt [no relation] from cantorial music, my grandmother sang Yiddish folk songs. But my main love of music was – I was influenced by my parents to get into – blues and early jazz.”

Rosenblatt’s dad is a doctor but he plays guitar, and he would play for the kids when Rosenblatt was growing up. His mother is a folksinger, Abigail Rosenblatt, with recordings of her own, and she has accompanied Rosenblatt’s bands on various occasions and on recordings. He has four siblings, who all played an instrument when they were growing up, but did not choose music as a profession, or at least not their main profession, as one of his brothers, Eli, who is a lawyer, has made recordings.

Rosenblatt grew up singing in synagogue, leading services; he took piano lessons. He said he picked up his first harmonica when he was 15 years old because his dad had a bunch lying around. He thought that “Oh Susannah” might have been his first tune, then his parents gave him a tape of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, “an African-American duo that were big in the ’30s, and then, with the folk music revival of the 1960s, a bunch of white, Jewish people rediscovered all these amazing African-American musicians, and it kind of brought them out of retirement. While these guys were out of style for the black community, for these young Jewish people that were rediscovering blues-roots music, these guys became stars again.”

Later, when Rosenblatt started getting into the electric harmonica and Chicago blues, his parents gave him other records to inspire him, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, for example.

While he majored in economics, many of his undergraduate credits were in music, he said, and, during his subsequent MBA, he was still playing weddings and other gigs.

He headed to Israel for about five years, in the latter half of the 1990s, to work in software design. It was an educational multimedia firm, he said, “so they had these various videos and diagrams explaining certain things, historical tours, they did different projects. One of them was the genius of Edison, and Leonardo da Vinci, so they explained various inventions and each invention that was being explained was in a video and I was doing the music for those videos, and then, at night I would play [music] in bars.”

In terms of college-level music instruction, Rosenblatt said he had “one year of serious music education,” the rest was on his own and through mentors, such as Howard Levy, a well-known harmonica player.

“I studied European music at the Rimon School of Jazz [and Contemporary Music] in Israel,” he said. “Then, toward my mid 20s, I started getting into Jewish music a little more seriously, the roots of Jewish music, klezmer and cantorial music, through an organization called KlezKanada…. And I really got into listening again to klezmer greats, trying to apply the repertoire, the ornamentation, etc., to the harmonica, and also to the piano.

“Out of that experience of learning these tunes,” he continued, “I needed some sort of outlet and I formed a band called Shtreiml…. I formed it with Josh Dolgin, who’s known as Socalled … and it started off as a young group playing traditional klezmer music with somewhat untraditional instruments because I was playing harmonica, my wife was on trombone, Josh Dolgin was on accordion, and then we had bass and drums. The group kind of morphed, we played traditional repertoire, to a certain degree, until we felt we couldn’t take the repertoire much further. Then, I started writing a bunch of new material, Jewish instrumental music based on traditional modes, using traditional ornamentation and improvisation, and that’s how the band started.”

As to his compositions, Rosenblatt said, “I listen to a lot of music and I come up with ideas. I don’t just compose in the Jewish realm, I also … have a new album coming out of ragtime and jazz, and not just instrumental music but vocal music as well…. Especially with regards to the Jewish material, I saw a need for it because we were researching a lot of old klezmer tunes and we kind of got tired of always having to research and look for something old, why not create something new? We always say that we have great new music that has a reverence for the past.”

Eastern Hora follows Harmonica Galitzianer (2002), Spicy Paprikash (2004) and Fenci’s Blues (2006). Between Eastern Hora and Fenci’s Blues, Rosenblatt was working with a group called D’Harmo, “and I came out with an album with them, I was working quite a bit with them. I was doing another project, called Jump Babylon, which is a Jewish rock project. It’s difficult, we are self-managed, in other words, I manage everything…. So, to try to do projects simultaneously, especially recording projects, it’s difficult, so that’s the reason for that gap in recordings for Shtreiml because I was doing other things in between [including his continuing role as artistic director of the six-year-old annual Montreal Jewish Music Festival, which will take place in August]. But that doesn’t mean that the band was on hiatus. We were still performing and, since the new record came out, I’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on trying to book the group because it’s fun and we get along, it’s fun to tour together. I think also that the playing of the group matured quite a bit between 2006 and 2014, and I think audiences see that the compositions are little more complex and I think our stage presence is better.”

Shtreiml and Fencioglu will be doing four gigs in British Columbia. He and Lemisch are bringing the whole mishpocha with them: four kids, 7, 5, 3 and seven months. “I’m looking forward to coming to Vancouver, it’s our second time. We were there last year for a wedding…. We have what we call functional music and then we have original music, and so we’re excited to be playing our artistic project for what I know is going to be an appreciative audience because whenever we go to folk festivals, it’s always people are there because they want to hear music.”

Shtreiml and Ismail Fencioglu will be at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival July 17-19, Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria July 15, Vancouver Island Musicfest in Comox July 10-12 and Fulford Hall on Salt Spring Island July 9.

Champion of Jewish folklore

Janie Respitz’s fascination with Yiddish, its history and its role in Jewish culture grew naturally. “My grandparents spoke Yiddish at home,” she said in an interview with the Independent from her home in Montreal. “I knew Yiddish songs and expressions. I went to a Jewish school through elementary and high school and the more I learned about Yiddish, the more I loved it. By university, I took it quite seriously.”

photo - Janie Respitz — Janie Respitz *(photo from Janie Respitz)*

She immersed herself in the language, digging out the stories and songs, their roots and their creators. After finishing a master’s in Jewish studies, she dedicated her life to teaching others what she loves best: aspects of Jewish culture, including Yiddish literature and traditional music.

Like Yiddish, the musical part of her identity grew organically, from a hobby to a second career. “I always liked music,” she said. “I never set out to be a professional singer but I liked to sing and play my guitar. When I was a teenager, my grandma once invited me to sing some Yiddish songs for a group of her friends. They liked it. Some of them invited me to sing for their friends and so on. It just happened.”

Forty years have passed since that modest beginning. Now, Respitz performs professionally, and people enjoy her concerts across Canada and abroad. “I never look for engagements,” she said. “They find me. I performed in New York, South America, Israel and, of course, everywhere in Canada.”

Yiddish language, Jewish culture and traditional music go hand in hand in all her presentations, encompassing academia and stage. She is a champion of Jewish folklore.

Any venue is good, as long as there is interest, she said, be it an auditorium at McGill University or a seniors seminar at a small community centre. She often incorporates songs into her lectures and workshops and sometimes even brings her guitar to her university classes. “I would come to give a lecture, and then people would ask me to sing,” she explained.

“I like teaching culture and history through songs. For example, if I give a lecture about a Jewish lifecycle, there are songs for every occasion, for weddings and babies, joyful and sad. You don’t have to understand every word in Yiddish to appreciate these songs.”

She said she realizes that Yiddish and the cultural milieu associated with it are things of the past, like Latin, but that doesn’t diminish her enthusiasm. “Of course, Yiddish will never become a spoken tongue again. It was a language of Eastern European Jews for hundreds of years, but that era ended with the Holocaust. Now, it serves those who want to know about our heritage.”

The revival of interest in Yiddish has been going on in Europe and America for awhile. “Among my students are people of all ages and demographics,” she said of the public’s interest in the language. “People want to learn Yiddish for various reasons: out of curiosity, to preserve the memory of their grandparents, to learn history. Some non-Jewish people also want to learn it. And why not? Some Jewish people want to study Chinese. Why not the opposite? I know one Japanese man who wants to translate Sholem Aleichem into Japanese; he studied Yiddish. Students from such diverse backgrounds make for a dynamic learning environment.”

Respitz endeavors to make every lecture and new course as engaging as possible for students, no matter their background. Spurred by her inquisitive nature, she conducts research about Jewish traditions, the history of people and places and, of course, Yiddish songs. “I try to find out who wrote them, when, why, where. The biographies of the poets and musicians. Who survived? Who perished in the Holocaust? If we don’t preserve those songs and poems now, they might disappear forever.”

At times, an entirely new course springs from her research. “I have a course on Russian Yiddish culture after the revolution. They had so many wonderful poets there.” She even speaks a bit of Russian. “To study Eastern European Jews, you almost have to know Russian.” Her sprinkling of Russian helped her when she traveled to Russia in 1981 on a trip organized by Canadian Jewish Congress.

“A group of us went to help the Russian Jewish refuseniks,” she recalled. “We talked to them about everything Jewish, celebrated Rosh Hashana together, sang and danced. Some of them knew English, others could speak Yiddish or Hebrew, which they learned secretly. It was forbidden by their government then. I know Yiddish and Hebrew, English, of course, plus my rudimentary Russian. We could communicate very well. It was such fun. Unfortunately, we had to cut our trip short. There were some troubles with the KGB, so we had to return home a few days earlier than expected.”

Even though she never visited Russia again, she often helps Russian Jewish immigrants in Montreal. “I introduce them to the Jewish culture through the community centre, and it’s very gratifying. They want to know everything – from holidays to traditional food – and it wasn’t always possible in Russia.”

Another country with deep Jewish roots is Poland, and Respitz recently returned from a journey there. “I went to Poland as an educator with a mission from Montreal’s CJA. My role was to bring the elements of 1,000 years of Jewish history in Poland to life.”

She visited several cities during the trip. “It was a thrill to stand in front of ohel Peretz [the tomb of Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, known as I.L. Peretz] at the Okapowa Cemetery in Warsaw and talk about this great writer and tell one of his stories. Playing my guitar and singing, while our group danced in the historic, beautifully restored Lancut Synagogue, was a true testament to the fact that we are still here. Particularly moving for me was to stand in front of the home of great Yiddish folk poet Mordecai Gebirtig in Krakow and sing his songs. It was truly an unforgettable experience.”

As she is an ardent partisan of everything Jewish, it’s no surprise she participates in KlezKanada, the Montreal annual festival of Jewish arts and music. KlezKanada’s goal is “to foster Jewish cultural and artistic creativity worldwide as both an ethnic heritage and a constantly evolving contemporary culture and identity.” Respitz’s songs and her magnetic presentations fit perfectly into such an atmosphere.

Vancouver Jewish community member Celia Brauer met Respitz at KlezKanada and was impressed. Brauer told the Independent, “Every year, for the last five years, I’ve gone to KlezKanada. I grew up in Montreal, speaking Yiddish. Yiddish is a rich language from our past. It gives us a taste of what was, a glimpse into the world that existed before. The trips to the festival felt like good shots of my ancestral culture. In the last two years, Janie taught a workshop there. I went to her workshops. She is very charismatic, has great knowledge of Yiddish and Jewish culture, music, writers. Nothing like that has ever been presented in Vancouver, and I thought that many people from our community might be interested in her stories. I wanted to bring her here.”

Brauer contacted the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture and the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and, together, they made Respitz’s visit possible.

Respitz will be in Vancouver on June 4, 5 and 7 with presentations at the Peretz Centre and the JCCGV. For tickets, visit janierespitz.wordpress.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Rada brings Israeli soul here

Ester Rada is at the Imperial on May 2 and McPherson Playhouse on June 19. (photo from Ester Rada)

Ester Rada’s most recent recording, I Wish, was released in March. The EP features Rada’s interpretation of four of her “favorite songs of the great Nina Simone”: “I Wish (I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free),” “Sinnerman,” “Four Women” and “Feeling Good.” Rada takes these classic songs made famous by an iconic singer/songwriter and makes them her own. Chutzpah, in the best sense of the word – which makes it fitting that Rada is being presented in Vancouver by Chutzpah!Plus. She plays the Imperial on May 2.

Rada was born in Kiryat Arba, just outside of Hebron, a year after her parents and older brother immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia as part of Operation Moses in 1984.

“Childhood is an amazing period of time because, as a kid, you see only the good in life, and there is a lot of good growing up in a small town, so life was great,” Rada told the Independent about her younger years. “Only when I look back I realize how strange and unnatural it is to grow up between fences and soldiers and fear from your neighbor.”

Raised in a religious household, Rada was exposed mainly to religious music, as well as Ethiopian, of course. Her mother’s decision to move the family to Netanya when Rada was 10 (her parents had divorced many years earlier) turned out to be pivotal.

“Netanya is a bigger, non-religious city near the sea, no fences and borders,” said Rada. “Drawn to this freedom, I allowed myself to enter the secular world. At the age of 12, MTV and VH1 were the platforms I could get music from, and there I was exposed to Stevie Wonder and Babyface, Boyz II Men, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo; their souls entered mine.”

Rada composes, sings and plays multiple instruments. When asked to highlight some of her musical training and/or performing background, she said, “At the age of 10, I was part of Sheba Choir. At the age of 15, my brother bought me my first guitar and I taught myself how to play. At 18, I was recruited to the army as a singer for two years.”

She has lived in Tel Aviv since the age of 21. “It is the best place in Israel,” she said. “The culture and art, music and beauty, freedom and love are the things that took me there.”

Joining Habima Theatre, Rada’s acting career took off before her singing career. She has performed on stage, on television and in film. While she still works in both arts, she admitted, “It’s getting harder combining the two. Last year, I was still acting in the theatre, but when I started touring I had to quit. I still get offers, but I’m not going to do theatre soon – but I’m shooting a movie this summer.”

While she speaks more than one language, Rada sings mainly in English. Her full-length record, Ester Rada – which includes the four songs on her debut solo recording, the EP Life Happens – features all English songs, with the exception of “Nanu Ney.”

“The music I listen to is mainly in English, the first song I wrote at the age of 13 was in English – also, I want to share my love with the whole world and I feel English is an international language,” she explained.

Her music has been described as a fusion, “gracefully combining Ethio-jazz, urban funk, neo-soul and R&B”; “her own blend of ska, reggae, world music, dance beats and jazz.” But Rada told the Independent, “I don’t like to describe it, as there is no one definition. I’m a mix of a lot of things and so is my music. Also, I’m changing all the time, so I believe that the ‘Ester Rada sound’ will change as well.”

Her look certainly has changed over the years, and one can’t help but remark on her unique, keen sense of fashion.

“I’ve always loved beauty,” she said of her style. “I remember myself as a kid wearing my mom’s shoes, clothes and makeup. I love that by wearing different clothes I can become something else.”

And much of her music celebrates such freedom, encouraging listeners to have the courage to explore, to not be afraid, to experience life and to enjoy it. Rada’s musical adventures tell us that she definitely practises what she preaches.

Ester Rada’s 19+ show at the Imperial, 319 Main St., on May 2 starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $36 (students $25), plus GST and service charge, from chutzpahfestival.com or 604-257-5145. She also is scheduled to perform in Victoria at the McPherson Playhouse (rmts.bc.ca or 1-888-717-6121) on June 19, 7:30 p.m.; tickets are $45/$53.

Rock pioneer plays at Chan

Micha Biton headlines the community’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations April 22. (photo from Micha Biton via Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)

Seven years in the making, Laura Bialis’ documentary Rock in the Red Zone premièred last October at the Haifa Film Festival, and has since enjoyed several other prominent screenings in Israel. Less than a kilometre from the Gaza Strip, Sderot has been a favorite target of Hamas rocket fire for the last decade and a half – but it has also been the birthplace of a unique style of rock music, producing more than its share of popular bands and singers. One of the rock pioneers featured in the documentary steps off the Israeli silver screen and into Vancouver’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on April 22 to lead our community’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations – Micha Biton.

JI: Your stop in Vancouver is part of a North American tour for Like Water. Are you traveling with a band? If so, who and what instruments?

MB: Exactly a year ago, my fifth album, Kmo Mayim (Like Water), was released in Israel and we performed a series of concerts around the country in celebration of the release – a tour that was very successful and drew attention from radio, television and media outlets. Subsequently, I performed in both San Francisco and New York and realized that, despite the fact that over half of the audience does not understand Hebrew, the music touched the hearts of those who heard it. For this concert in Vancouver, I am coming with five amazing musicians: Yossi Shitrit (electric guitar), Shir Yerushalmi (electric guitar), Hillel Shitrit (keyboards), Itamar Abohasera (drums), Shai Zrian (bass).

JI: In which other cities are you performing on this tour? For how long are you here?

MB: We are coming directly from Israel, and Vancouver is the first city on our tour. After Vancouver, I will perform in Los Angeles and San Francisco. I’ll be in North America for less than two weeks. Due to my heavy performance schedule in Israel, I couldn’t carve out more time to tour on this trip, but I always manage to make a little time to take in the atmosphere of the cities in which I perform. This is not my first time in Vancouver – last year, during the war between Israel and Gaza, I brought my whole family to Vancouver to visit my wife’s family and I fell in love with your beautiful city and people. I’m excited that on my second trip to Vancouver I will get to perform for the wonderful people that I met in Vancouver.

JI: Like Water is your fourth solo recording?

MB: Kmo Mayim is my fourth solo recording, but it is my fifth album. In 1997, I produced my first album, Tanara, with a group of talented musician and it received critical acclaim in Israel. Soon after, I became a solo artist and, over two decades, I recorded four albums of original music. For me, Kmo Mayim is a very personal album that I wrote about relationships – friendships, love, connection with God. Every song tells a different story, and every story has an open-ended moral attached to it. I’m very proud of this album and I’m happy that my audiences like it.

image - Kmo Mayim cover — Micha Biton’s latest CD is *Kmo Mayim*.

JI: You are one of the pioneers of the renowned rock music scene in Sderot. Could you share a bit about its development, how it has changed over the years?

MB: In the 1990s, I created a band called Tanara, a period that saw an incredible explosion in the Israeli music scene, especially in Sderot. Bands like Tippex, Knesiyat Hasechel and ours developed a new sound that was special and unique to Sderot, combining rock music with the Moroccan/ethnic sounds of our neighborhoods and our childhoods. In those early days, Sderot was underdeveloped and family-oriented. We didn’t have much to do, so music became our lives and we played and composed in the bomb shelters all of the time. (In those days, we used the shelters for writing music and rehearsing for concerts. Today, unfortunately, they are used as shelters from the rockets fired from Gaza.) In addition, it was a town where everyone knew everyone – there was no such thing as a stranger in our town, and the warmth created by this strong community significantly influenced our ability to create something unique musically.

JI: How about your own style? How would you describe it now versus when you first started out?

MB: My musical style hasn’t really changed much over the years. I’ve been very successful continuing to write ethnic rock in the style that I helped to create and I am lucky that my audience appreciates my style and my sensitivity. While my roots are strongly planted in Sderot, I am different than most of my fellow musicians from the area. At the age of 10, after my father died, I left my Moroccan biological family and was fostered by an Ashkenazi family in Jerusalem. From that early, tender age, I started to live between two cultures, understanding the beauty of each, and using both of them to influence the way I compose and the way I live. It turns out that my foster mother, Galila Ron-Feder, was a modestly successful author in Israel who shortly after my arrival chose to write an entire book based on my life and my journey (and I was only 10!). This book, El Atzmi (To Myself), became her most successful book. It became a series of books, and then a movie. It has been translated into 27 languages. The influence of Galila and her world, and the world of my parents together, helped me to create a new world of my own. My music and the lyrics that I write are very connected to the fact that I have lived most of my life straddled between these two worlds.

JI: A 2007 New York Times article refers to “Biton’s anthem for Sderot,” which was “I don’t leave the town for any Qassam.” What is it like living in Sderot these days? Are you hopeful for the future?

MB: In the quiet days of peace, we love living in this area. My nine brothers and sisters and their families live in Sderot, and my family and I live on the border between Sderot and Gaza in Netiv Haasara, a moshav where we can see Gaza from our backyard. This is my home, and we are very drawn to this place. For the past 10 years, we have lived with the reality that at any moment, day or night, the sirens will start and we have 15 seconds to run to our bomb shelters. Our children have grown up with the feeling that life is beautiful but uncertain. This past summer, and several times in the past, we have been forced to leave our homes and our community because of the imminent danger that the conflict caused. Rockets fell on our yard. A rocket hit my wife’s parents’ home, who live a block away from us, destroying precious family heirlooms. For every rocket that fell last summer, there are hundreds of rockets that have landed around us in the past 10 years that go unreported but, for us, they are very real. When we came to Vancouver last summer, my 4-year-old son looked at me and asked, “Abba, why don’t they have tzeva adom (warning sirens) here in Vancouver?” and I explained to him that not everyone has to deal with rockets falling on their heads all of the time. It was a very sad moment for me.

In 2007, when I wrote the song ‘I don’t leave the town for any Qassam,’ I felt that people were deserting Sderot and all of her beauty because of the situation. I wanted to give them strength and remind them that it was critical to stay and to fight for our hometown. Less than a year later, I wrote HaTzad HaMuar (The Lighted Side) from the same place in my heart. Despite all of the pain, I wrote, don’t forget the light, the hope, the optimism. Because that is really what Sderot is all about. Not a place where rockets fall, but a place of warmth and love and peace.

JI: In the same article, you speak about Hagit Yaso as a star almost certain to rise to the top. She has, of course. And she played here in Vancouver last year for Yom Ha’atzmaut. Are there any current young Sderot musicians for whom we should be keeping watch?

MB: Hagit is an amazing singer and an extraordinary human being. I’m proud to stay that she was one of my most talented students when I taught music and theatre in Sderot. I am so happy for her success and that she represents a new generation of musicians that has emerged from Sderot. The wonderful thing about this young generation is that they are succeeding to continue the tradition of Sderot, bringing exciting new musical projects to Israel and to the world. During one of my tours, I invited her to the stage to sing with me, and it was a really beautiful moment of connection between the pioneers of the music scene and the young musicians of this generation.

One of the new, talented musicians climbing up the ladder at the moment is my cousin Tzafrir Yifrach, who concentrates on world music. He has exceptional talent and is performing quite a bit these days around Israel, and musicians from all over Israel love coming to his recording studio in Sderot to work on their own projects with him. Another rising talent is Nir Vaknin, who is in the process of finishing his debut album.

JI: If there is anything else you’d like to add, please feel free.

MB: During the time that I was in production for Kmo Mayim, I started another project with a musician from the U.S., Lisa Tzur, who was the executive producer of Kmo Mayim. I’ve traveled a lot in North America and have performed at synagogues where the singing was so beautiful that I never forgot it. I wanted to be a part of that somehow. Taking words from the prayer service and from Psalms, as well as a few original texts, we recorded a project that is different than anything else that I have recorded. The idea was to create music that was accessible and singable by audiences that were not necessarily Israeli. Lisa comes from that world (as a lifelong member of the Reform Jewish movement and as an ordained rabbi) and together we created something very special that will be released this summer both in Israel and in the world.

The April 22 festivities at the Chan start at 7:30 p.m. For tickets ($18) and more information, visit jewishvancouver.com/yh2015.

Preserving the music of film

New Budapest Orpheum Society ensemble, from left to right: Danny Howard, Iordanka Kissiova, Mark Sonksen, Ilya Levinson, Don Stille, Philip Bohlman, Stewart Figa and Julia Bentley. (photo from Cedille Records)

A different type of “soundtrack” has recently been released: New Budapest Orpheum Society’s As Dreams Fall Apart: The Golden Age of Jewish Stage and Film Music 1925-1955 (Cedille Records, 2014).

NBOS is an ensemble in residence in the humanities division at the University of Chicago. The group has released three CDs: Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano: Jewish Cabaret Music, Popular and Political Songs, 1900-1945 (Cedille Records 2002) and Jewish Cabaret in Exile (Cedille Records 2009), as well as a CD to accompany the book Jewish Musical Modernism, Old and New (University of Chicago Press 2008), which is edited by NBOS artistic director and narrator Philip V. Bohlman.

Bohlman is the Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of the humanities and of music at the University of Chicago. According to his bio, “The study of Jewish music in modernity has provided a primary focus for his research for 35 years and, since 1998, has provided the context for his activities as a performer…. His work in historical performance has been recognized with the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society and the Donald Tovey Prize from Oxford University.”

As are their previous CDs, As Dreams Fall Apart is both an esthetic and academic effort. The CD booklet includes a lengthy and fascinating essay by Bohlman on sound in film, which, of course, has as its origins the stage. Bohlman takes it to the Jewish cabaret stage specifically.

“In history’s very first synchronized sound film, Alan Crosland’s 1927 The Jazz Singer, the title character, Jakie Rabinowitz takes to the stage as Jack Robin, enacting and envoicing the struggle between Jewish tradition in Samson Raphaelson’s original play, The Day of Atonement, and the dreams of stardom awaiting him in the jazz clubs and vaudeville stages of New York City,” writes Bohlman. “The (real life) jazz singer’s musical transition from stage to film formed at the confluence of real-life transitions for European Jews at the beginning of the 20th century – migration from rural shtetl to urban ghetto, immigration from the Old World to the New – and of allegorical transitions – from religious orthodoxy to modern secularism, from diaspora to cosmopolitanism. As the old order of European empire collapsed in the wake of World War I, the Jewish musical traditions that had metaphorically represented its political and ideological boundaries … gathered new metaphors: those of modernity and modernism, ripe for the tales that would move

from the skits of the cabaret stage to the scenes filling the frames of sound film.”

As Dreams Fall Apart features the work of numerous composers, including Hermann Leopoldi, Hanns Eisler and Friedrich Holländer. The melodies and lyrics range from lively and humorous to sombre and serious. The songs take listeners from a traditional world to dreams of a better future through the tragedy of the Holocaust and, finally, to a more tempered hope in the aftermath of the war.

“Yiddish film musicals were the product of musicians and music on the move, a process of triangulation that witnessed the journeys of actors and directors from the United States, and musicians from Vienna and Berlin, all of whom would gather in Poland for the filming and production of films in the Yiddish studios of Warsaw and elsewhere in Poland and Lithuania,” writes Bohlman. And this movement is reflected in the CD, which starts with a section called On the Shores of Utopia, and the song “Die Koschere Mischpoche” (“The Kosher Family”) – the “opening verse of the original street song in Viennese dialect.” Dream sections follow, with songs like “Wir Ladies aus Amerika / We Ladies from America” and “Composers’ Revolution in Heaven” (which has Chopin, Wagner, Beethoven and Bizet in heaven, angry about all the people on earth making money from their music), before dystopia sets in (“Theresienstadt Potpourri – Aus der Familie der Sträusse / From the Strauss Family”), to be replaced by dreams of Hollywood that quickly fade, to the 10th and final section, From the Ruins of Dystopia, which features three songs by Holländer – and famously sung by Marlene Dietrich – in the Billy Wilder film A Foreign Affair (1948), which was set in Berlin.

Mezzo soprano Julia Bentley and baritone Stewart Figa deliver solid performances on As Dreams Fall Apart, capturing the cabaret style. They are skilfully accompanied by Danny Howard (percussion), Iordanka Kissiova (violin), Ilya Levinson (music director/arranger/piano), Mark Sonksen (bass) and Don Stille (accordion).

Klezmer meets punk

Germany’s Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird play at the Electric Owl on March 6 as part of the Chutzpah! festival. (photo from Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird via Chutzpah!)

Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird live up to the hype. They are indeed “helping klezmer reach a new renaissance, seasoning it with folk, punk and deep-digging lyrics, full of sarcasm and wicked self-irony.” They most certainly belong “to this caste of Yiddish music agitators” and their music is “[a]n absolute must for lovers of unusual, intelligent, challenging, exciting folk music and a blast at every instant.” They are “forward-marching and backward-glancing,” making “truly great art.”

And that’s not the half of it. On their website (paintedbird.de), you can read more about what reviewers have said, you can download the lyrics to all their songs, you can watch several videos – and you can get an excellent idea of what to expect when they perform at the Electric Owl on March 6 as part of this year’s Chutzpah! festival. Kahn spoke with the Jewish Independent ahead of that one-night only show.

JI: Could you share a bit about your background – how you came to be a musician, how and when you came to live in Berlin, for example?

DK: I’ve been a musician all my life but I first started working professionally as a singer-songwriter in Detroit, and then in New Orleans in 2001.

I was a part of founding the Earthwork music collective in Michigan, which has grown to a large community of artists and activists. I produced four albums of my songs with them. I first really invested in klezmer music and Yiddish after attending Klez Kanada, in Quebec, for the first time in 2004. It was there that I met Alan Bern, who was my accordion teacher. He had been living in Berlin for many years and he offered me his apartment to sublet. I was already quite interested in German theatre, particularly Brecht, and I wanted to live in Europe, so it fit.

After going to the Jewish festivals and workshops that summer in Krakow and Weimar, I had the idea to start the band the Painted Bird. And it was around then that I really started learning not only German, but Yiddish and incorporating translations into my songs, and performing in many languages at once. The band has had many members but the heart of it for all these years has always been Michael Tuttle, whom I met in New Orleans, playing bass, and Hampus Melin, a drummer from Sweden, whom we met in Berlin. We wanted to create a band that would be able to take traditional songs, folk songs, in different languages and infuse them with a modern sensibility that we take from the other music we dig – punk, jazz, new music. And Berlin is the perfect city for this band. It’s a real cosmopolis.

JI: You’ve studied drama and your bio notes that you’ve been a professional actor since age 12. How does acting fit in with your music career?

DK: From a performance perspective, I’ve never made too much of a distinction between ways of being on a stage. Songs and plays are simply different modes of collaborative or solo storytelling. As a musician, I get to employ many of the techniques I need to write, direct or act in the theatre. And I’ve never really quit making theatre. I’ve done many productions over the years, in the States, as well as in Germany. I’ve been involved as a composer or arranger of music and songs for various productions, and I’ve been acting and directing again, as well.

I’m currently very involved in Berlin at the Maxim Gorki theatre, a wonderful space for progressive work these days. The new artistic director, the Turkish-born German Shermin Langhoff, is an inspiring, powerful voice for diversity and political engagement in drama. I’ve been a kind of “house-poet” for the theatre, working on several productions as composer, actor, musician, etc. I’m about to direct a small play in their studio theatre space, an adaptation of Romain Gary’s The Dance of Genghis Cohn. It’s become an important family for me, and has also connected to the international klezmer family, as well. I curate a concert series there, focusing heavily on new Jewish music.

JI: What drew/draws you to Yiddish as a language in which to write and sing?

DK: Besides the connection it may have to my personal background as a descendant of immigrants from what we could call Yiddishland, I’m attracted to Yiddish on a purely esthetic level. I like the way Yiddish sounds, how it feels to sing and speak it. It tastes good. I like the things you can express in Yiddish that don’t quite work in other languages. And I like the challenge of trying to translate that not only into English, but into a kind of performance that makes sense to an audience that may not have the cultural or historical literacy to know where it comes from. I think Yiddish has a lot to teach us about the world we live in today, as well as the world of a century ago. It’s a language which defies borders, which defies easy categorization, which defies simple historical narratives. It’s a defiant language.

JI: Your lyrics are poetry, full of meaning, commentary on history and contemporary society. How would you describe your core beliefs/values? Do they have any foundation in Jewish traditions/ teachings?

DK: My core beliefs, which are never fixed, have their foundations in many things in my life. Some of those things are Jewish. Others simply come from being a child of Detroit in the late 20th century, being an ex-pat, being someone who travels a lot, etc. But some of what I received as a Jewish education goes against other values that I hold to. I try to take what I need from traditions and leave the rest alone. But this is itself a tradition. So, insofar as Jewish tradition contains a tradition of subverting other traditions, I’m a fairly traditional subversive.

JI: You also arrange the words of others, Heinrich Heine, Bertold Brecht, Itzik Manger, Leonard Cohen, and a wide range of writers. How do you choose, or what aspects of a poet’s words tend to interest/excite you?

DK: I work on what speaks to me.

I’ve loved Leonard Cohen since I was about 14 or 15 years old. I definitely owe the fact that I chose to be a songwriter and a poet largely to him. Brecht was the thinker and poet who kept me interested in the radical potential of the theatre to dynamically reflect the world in a political and lyrically effective way. My first plays that I worked on out of college were by him, in New Orleans and Detroit. Somehow, they were the best response I could find to the Bush era. Brecht wrote of living in “bad times for poetry.” I think I know what he meant. He was also a tremendous songwriter, who directly influenced people like Bob Dylan and performers like Nina Simone.

Heine and Manger were poets whom I really discovered in learning German and Yiddish. And now I understand that they are relatives of Cohen, Dylan (both Bob and Dylan Thomas) and others. They are just obscured behind the barriers of language and the catastrophes of history. I like to think of what a young woman I met once said after attending Klez Kanada and first encountering modern Yiddish poetry, she’s from Newfoundland, not Jewish, and she said: “I can’t believe it. It’s like a crime that I’ve been alive for 25 years and no one has ever told me about Itzik Manger!” I think a lot of people would feel that way if they could read him. He was amazing.

Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird’s 19+ show at the Electric Owl, 1926 Main St., starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30/$25. For the other musical performances, as well as the dance, theatre and comedy shows that take place during Chutzpah!, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Moose-led family show

Alex the Moose, aka Alex Konyves, performs at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s Family Day on Feb. 9. (photo by Kale Wilson Beaudry of klphotograph.com)

The show had ended. Alex the Moose, though, had not left the building. Known to his friends as Alex Konyves, the man beneath the antlers sat next to me basking in the afterglow of his Family Day concert at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on Feb. 9.

With sweat on his brow and a big smile, he and I sat looking towards the now vacant stage. No longer in moose attire, he was obviously pleased. “I was so excited for this show,” he beamed. “We were asked to do it a number of months ago, and put a great band together with Jesse Bentley on bass, Jeff Child on percussion, Emma Wong on vocals and myself on guitar and vocals. We had a blast. The kids here are really adorable, really sweet, really engaged.”

Alex the Moose, joined by a giraffe, a cheetah and a bunny, played for the children, but the parents and grandparents in the audience bobbed their heads and tapped their feet, too. Blending elements of funk, Latin, klezmer and rock and roll, the band opened with a bass solo from Jesse the Cheetah (Bentley) that would not be out of place at the Commodore Ballroom on a Saturday night.

“The trick is keeping it suitable for children, but also engaging for parents,” Konyves explained. “Some children’s music is not the most engaging for parents, and if they’re going to be playing at your house, on repeat, it’s nice to have music that’s engaging and fun, original and diverse.” Hence, the ensemble includes a range of instruments – the didgeridoo, two types of hand-drum, wind chimes, guitar, bass and voices. “We like to keep it eclectic,” said Konyves.

They opened with an original song – “Wake up in the Morning” – and aptly chose their current single, “The Pyjama Song,” as the finale. The group performed other originals, such as “The Bumblebee Song” and “The Iguana Song,” in which the group counts iguanas falling off a tree, in Spanish, as well as classics like “The Hokey Pokey,” “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”

“The first time I played music for young children was at Camp Miriam when I was a madrich [counselor] there, and I had a young age group,” said Konyves, now 29. “At night, I’d put them to sleep by playing guitar and, three songs in, they’d all be fast asleep. It was really special.”

These days, Konyves, who is also the song leader at Temple Sholom, lists Raffi, Debbie Friedman and the Beatles as his musical influences. “Raffi talks a lot about child-honoring, where you really respect children in every regard. You don’t push product placements, you really allow them to make choices for themselves, and you give them your heart.”

Konyves also believes in making music accessible to children. “If you have any instruments in your house, put them out,” he advises parents. “Just like having books in your house, it should be the same with musical instruments.”

As our conversation wound down, an impromptu jam session broke out among the bandmates on stage. To the bellowing of the didgeridoo and the beat of the djembe, Konyves explained his love of playing for children: “Kids are very honest with you when you play. If they don’t like it, they’ll let you know.”

Based on the bouncing, jumping, laughing and smiling in the audience, they liked the Family Day show a lot.

Many of Alex the Moose and company’s songs are available for download at musicwithalex.bandcamp.com.

Benjamin Groberman is a born and raised Vancouverite. He is a freelance writer, and is pursuing a bachelor of education degree, with aspirations to teach in a Jewish high school. He is a resident of Vancouver’s Moishe House.

ZDS music inspires movement

Zvuloon Dub System is at the Imperial on Feb. 20, the first of several world-class musicians taking part in this year’s Chutzpah! festival. (photo by Naom Chojnowski)

“Come prepared to dance!” advises the Chutzpah! promotional material about Zvuloon Dub System’s upcoming show at the Imperial. Wise words, indeed. Just listen to a few bars of any song and you will find yourself moving to the beat.

Founded in 2006 by brothers Asaf and Ilan Smilan, the Tel Aviv-based band is part of an impressive world music lineup at this year’s Chutzpah! As part of its series on the festival this month, the Jewish Independent spoke with Asaf Smilan about ZDS’s evolution into an internationally known reggae group.

JI: How did you come together as the current incarnation of the band, and who will be coming to Vancouver?

AS: ZDS is a little bit like a sports team. We have an extended lineup with sub musicians, and when we go on tour, we need to do some personnel changes in some of the positions from time to time.

The core lineup of ZDS has included eight musicians since 2010. When we recorded our latest album, Anbessa Dub, we brought more musicians to the studio to achieve a certain sound. When we released the album, we wanted to credit all the musicians that took part in the production of the album – the sub musicians that play with us – so we credit all of them on our website.

We’ll come to Vancouver with eight members: Gili Yalo on vocals, Inon Peretz on trumpet, Idan Salomon on saxophone, Ilan Smilan and Simon Nahum on guitars, Lior Romano on organ, Tal Markus on bass and me on drums. This is the same lineup that will play tonight [Jan. 22] in Tel-Aviv.

JI: Is there something about the tribe of Zvuloon that inspired you to choose the name for your band?

AS: Back in 2006 when we start to play together, I used to live on Zvuloon Street in Tel Aviv. We used to rehearse in my apartment and we were surprised to see that many neighbors really liked what they heard. One couple from the other side of the street used to go out to the balcony to listen, another neighbor from our building used to come down to our apartment and sit with us, the man from the grocery shop on the corner brought us Arabic coffee and cookies. We felt strong vibes from that place. So, when we thought about a name for the band, we wanted to capture that special vibe in the name of the band and, because we’re playing roots reggae that relates to Rasta (that relates to the 12 tribes of Israel), we felt that Zvuloon was the right name for us.

JI: Have the reactions to your music differed between Jewish and mainstream audiences? Have you played in the Caribbean and/or in Ethiopia? If so, what was the experience like? If not, any plans to do so?

AS: There are small differences, but basically it’s the same reaction. Sometimes we’re playing in front of a mixed audience of Jewish people, Caribbean people, Ethiopians and mainstream audiences and our music can speak to all of them. This is the beauty of music, the power to touch the hearts of many people no matter where they’re coming from.

When we played last summer in Jamaica, we sang mostly in Amharic. The Jamaican people were really curious to hear how reggae mixed with Ethiopian music, so after we played at Reggae Sumfest in Montego Bay, we got an invitation to come to play in Kingston at the Haile Selassie birthday celebrations organized by the Rasta people.

In Israel, we’re playing many times in front of Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian audiences and we can feel how the music brings people together and how people from different backgrounds can enjoy and dance together to our music.

When people who were not familiar with Ethiopian culture come to me after the show and ask me where they can hear more Ethiopian music, I get the feeling that we’re really doing something important that opens the minds and the hearts of the people.

JI: On Anbessa Dub, there are Ethiopian songs done in ZDS style. Can you talk about adapting them for this album?

AS: I started to listen to Ethiopian music in the early 2000s, a long time before we started to work on Anbessa Dub. After Gili joined the band in 2010, we started to know each other and, one day, we were sitting together and listening to music. I asked Gili if he knew a song in Amharic that I really liked. From that conversation, we started to think maybe we could play this song in the band in our version. A week later, I brought the arrangement to the band rehearsal and everybody really liked the new song, [as did] our audiences. Slowly, we added more Ethiopian songs to our set until we came up with the Anbessa Dub album.

During the work on the album, we developed a unique way to translate the Ethiopian music, which is based on 6/8 rhythms, into a reggae beat in 4/4, so the tempo of the song isn’t changing but the whole feeling is extremely different. When we worked on some of the songs with Ethiopian artists who knew the original versions, it took them some time to understand what we’d done to the songs.

JI: Freedom Time features English lyrics and Anbessa Dub songs in Ethiopian languages. Any plans to do a Hebrew album?

AS: Lately, I have found myself exploring the influences of biblical text on Jamaican reggae so maybe we’ll do something with that in the future. Last year, we released “Manginah,” our first single in Hebrew, so I believe that some day in the future we’ll come up with a Hebrew album.

image - Anbessa Dub CD cover — Israeli artist Moran Yogev created the cover of Zvuloon Dub System’s *Anbessa Dub* album.

JI: Who did the cover art of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba for Anbessa Dub?

AS: The beautiful artwork featuring King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba was done by Moran Yogev, a very talented young Israeli artist.

I saw some of Moran’s works that combined elements of Ethiopian art in the newspaper and I felt that she could bring the right appearance to the album. I was very happy when she told me that she loves our music and would be happy to design our album.

JI: What’s the Tel Aviv music scene like these days? In what kinds of venues do you usually play?

AS: Tel Aviv is a small city but the music scene is quite big. You’ll find many talented musicians playing all kinds of musical genres, from Middle Eastern to jazz, from Ethiopian music to rock and roll and electronic music.

We’re playing in many venues, like the Barbie Club, Hangar 11, Levontin 7, the Zone and many other venues in the city.

JI: Are there any musicians, Israeli or not, with whom you would like to work?

AS: We have a list of musicians that we would like to work with, and from time to time we’re doing it. In the reggae field, we have worked with artists like U Roy, Cornell Campbell, Echo Minott, Ranking Joe, the Viceroys and others. In the Ethiopian field, we have worked with the legendary Mahmoud Ahmed, with Zemene Melesse and Jacob [Tigrinya] Lilay. In Israel, we have worked with Carolina, and Ester Rada. I have a dream to collaborate one day with Ehud Banai.

JI: What’s next for ZDS?

AS: I hope we’ll continue to move forward, to create more music, to tour as much as possible and to collaborate with more musicians and, by doing so, to develop our unique sound.

JI: If there is anything else you’d like to share with our readers, please do.

AS: I invite each one of you personally to come to our show in Vancouver and to discover something new, music that unites people and cultures into a groovy soundtrack.

Opening for Zvuloon Dub System at the Imperial (319 Main St.) 19+ show on Feb. 20, 8 p.m., is Brooklyn-based band Twin Wave, which fuses jazz, soul, rock and pop. Tickets are $30, $25 for students. Other Chutzpah! music offerings are Les Yeux Noirs; the Borealis String Quartet, Eric Wilson and Boris Sichon; Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird; Diwan Saz; and, in Chutzpah!Plus, Ester Rada. For tickets and the full schedule of music, dance, comedy and theatre, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Azrieli music prizes

The Azrieli Music Project (AMP), established to celebrate, foster and create opportunities for the performance of high-quality new orchestral music on a Jewish theme or subject, is launching two new prizes: the Azrieli Prize in Jewish Music, an international prize for a recently composed or performed work by a living composer, and the Azrieli Commissioning Competition, for a Canadian composer of any age. Each prize is for a new work of Jewish orchestral music and carries a value of $50,000.

The Azrieli Prize in Jewish Music is an international prize, awarded to the living composer of a recently composed and/or performed work of orchestral Jewish music of between 15 and 25 minutes duration. The work must have been written in the last 10 years (after Jan. 1, 2005) and have never been commercially recorded. Composers may be of any age, experience level, nationality, faith, background or affiliation. This prize is limited to Canadian citizens or permanent residents. The deadline for submissions by open nomination is Jan. 1, 2016. A written proposal of the work to be composed, plus two excerpts of three-minutes each from previously completed works (score and recording) must be submitted by March 15, 2015. The deadline for the completed composition will be July 1, 2016.

The AMP is delighted to confirm its partnership with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and maestro Kent Nagano, who will perform the winning works at the Azrieli Music Project Gala Concert at Maison symphonique on Oct. 19, 2016, in Montreal.

Dr. Sharon Azrieli Perez, noted operatic soprano and scholar in Jewish and cantorial music, spearheaded the creation of the new prize. “Music has always played an important role in the development of cultural identities,” she said. “Whether through folk traditions, in liturgical settings or in the concert hall, music reflects history and soul. In creating this extraordinary opportunity for composers of Jewish orchestral music, we hope to sustain music’s vital continuity through the long and rich history of Jewish people and culture. The Azrieli Music Project will become the medium for innovation, creation and risk-taking by today’s most inspired orchestral composers.”

The question “What is Jewish Music?” is at the heart of a constantly evolving cultural dialogue. Taking into account the rich and diverse history of Jewish musical traditions, the AMP defines “Jewish music” as music that incorporates a Jewish thematic or Jewish musical influence. Jewish themes may include biblical, historical, liturgical, secular or folk elements. Defining Jewish music as both deeply rooted in history and tradition and forward-moving and dynamic, the AMP encourages themes and content drawn from contemporary Jewish life and experience. The AMP challenges orchestral composers of all faiths, backgrounds and affiliations to engage creatively and critically with this question in submitting their work.

Joseph Rouleau, one of the world’s foremost operatic basses and honorary president of Jeunesses Musicales Canada, will serve as chair of the AMP advisory council. He said, “It is a tremendous pleasure to help launch this significant new prize, which offers such extraordinary opportunities – for the two composers who will have their work performed by Maestro Nagano and the OSM, and for the public, who will benefit from the creation of two new works of art on the fascinating theme of Jewish music.”

Rouleau is joined on the advisory council by Azrieli Perez, Canadian composer Ana Sokolović, Judge Barbara Seal, CM, and classical music philanthropist David Sela. The AMP jury will be announced at a later date.

For details, score guidelines, deadlines and the online application form, visit azrielifoundation.org/music.

Barry Sisters recordings now available

Left to right: Yiddish music icons, Merna and Claire Barry, entertained generations of Jewish Americans with their jazzy versions of Yiddish songs. (photo from rsa.fau.edu)

For more than 40 years, the Bagelman Sisters, later known as the Barry Sisters, were the darlings of Jewish entertainment. Their recordings could be found in almost every Jewish household in the 1950s and ’60s. The younger of the two sisters, Merna, passed away in 1976. The older sister, Claire, died on Nov. 22, 2014, in Hollywood, Fla., at 94.

Who were the Barry Sisters?

On the surface, they were two beautiful girls, dressed in the latest fashion, hair perfectly coiffed, singing with sultry voices that could make your heart leap. But their impact was great.

Born in New York, the two sisters were originally known as the Bagelman Sisters. Many saw them as the Yiddish answer to the popular Andrews Sisters in the 1940s. They combined Jewish folk songs and Yiddish theatre ditties with swing arrangements and perfect harmony. When Clara and Minnie changed their names to Claire and Merna, the Bagelman Sisters became the Barry Sisters. The duo has often been credited with creating Yiddish swing, a music genre that did not exist previously.

The glamorous Barry Sisters were regular guests on Yiddish radio programs like Yiddish Melodies in Swing. They toured with The Ed Sullivan Show to the Soviet Union and performed in Israel in October 1962. The popularity of their catchy and jazzy tunes may have paved the way for the Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof and the klezmer revival of the late 1970s.

The Judaica Sound Archives at the Recorded Song Archives at Florida Atlantic University has 41 recordings by this dynamic duo of Yiddish music, including: “Abi Gezunt,” “In Meine Oigen Bistie Shain,” “Channah from Havannah,” “Bublitchki,” “Dem Neyem Sher” and many others.

For more Barry Sisters recordings, visit rsa.fau.edu/barry-sisters. Due to copyright concerns, only snippets can be heard on the public website, however, full versions are available to users of the RSA Research Station, rsa.fau.edu.

Niels Falch is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and is currently writing a dissertation on the influence of Jewish music in American popular songs. This article appears courtesy of the Recorded Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University, rsa.fau.edu.