klezmer

Obliquestra plays at folk fest

The accordion “has gradually and sneakily taken over my life,” says musician David Symons, member of the group Obliquestra. (photo by Stephanie Reed)

“Klezmer, choro, Tin Pan Alley, French musette, German songs, Russian waltzes, and so on” … Obliquestra plays the music they “most wanted to play after being isolated at home for so long” during the pandemic, David Symons told the Independent. The accordionist, singer and composer is one of the three members of the band who will be playing at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, which takes place July 19-21 at Jericho Beach Park.

Symons will be joined at the festival by Dr. Sick on violin, guitar and musical saw, and Susanne Ortner on clarinet. It will be their first time performing together in Vancouver.

Obliquestra started when live music started returning in 2021, explained Symons. “Dr. Sick, who I had worked with for years in my band The Salt Wives (and one of the most unfairly talented musicians in town) called me up and said there was a new bar opening next door to his house and it would be amazingly convenient to play there every Saturday. I called Susanne Ortner, who I hadn’t played with, but who I knew was a master klezmer clarinetist, though she mainly does Brazilian choro and jazz now.”

They started playing together in Symons’ backyard with banjoist Aaron Gunn and bassist Stoo Odom, “without any concept, really,” said Symons, just playing what they wanted to play.

“I’ve sort of always had this eclectic approach,” he said. “Discreet genres of music are mostly a marketing convenience. Musicians have always played and been influenced by whatever they heard, whatever was available, and whatever the public would pay them to play. Klezmer is a good example of this, being an amalgam of various musical styles from central and eastern Europe and, later, America. I doubt those old school musikers (you wouldn’t call someone a klezmer in those days unless you were trying to get punched) were concerned with notions of ‘authenticity’ or genre. They were playing what they heard and liked, and what their public wanted to hear. We are at least doing the first part of that.”

photo - Obliquestra – Dr. Sick, left, David Symons and Susanne Ortner – play at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival on July 21 — Obliquestra – Dr. Sick, left, David Symons and Susanne Ortner – play at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival on July 21. *(photo by Stephanie Reed)*

While Symon has “gotten away from klezmer a bit these last few years, really since the pandemic started, mostly for lack of people to play it with,” he said “it’s still the music closest to my heart.”

Why that’s the case, and why he’s also been interested in Yiddish music, despite not being Jewish, is hard to put into words, he said. “In fact, if I could put it into words, maybe we wouldn’t need music. It makes me feel good?”

He said many people assume that a person is Jewish if they play klezmer, and even that it’s a strange thing for a non-Jew to do.

“I’ve always felt this attitude contains an implicit condescension toward the music,” said Symons. “It would never occur to anyone that if someone plays Rachmaninoff they must be Russian, or if they play bluegrass they must be a hillbilly, etc. The music stands on its own merits, whatever one’s ethnic background. Most of the Jewish klezmorim I have known didn’t grow up with the music any more than I did. Still, you have to be careful and respectful. I used to do a lot of Yiddish song and, though I love it, I do less of that now because I realized that, unless I am prepared to devote a few years of my life to learning the language, there’s a lot of nuance that I’m going to miss, no matter how much I work on my pronunciation.”

Symons grew up in rural New Hampshire. “My father plays Latin percussion and guitar, but my folks were divorced and I didn’t see him much, and I had very little interest in music until about 15,” he said. “I was into theatre and acting. Then, I more or less simultaneously discovered Tom Waits and classical music, particularly Beethoven, and suddenly fell in love with music.

“I played guitar for a few years, but the Waits album Frank’s Wild Years convinced me to get an accordion. This was pre-internet in rural New Hampshire, so I put an ad in the local paper asking if anyone had an accordion I could buy. It turned out a lot of people did, and I was very lucky to get something playable. Then, the accordion more or less sat around decoratively for the next couple of years until I happened to see Itzhak Perlman on David Letterman’s show with a bunch of klezmer musicians. He had just released a klezmer album with the top American klezmer bands at the time, and I became obsessed with this music and went down a deep rabbit hole for the next 25 years or so. I taught myself accordion to play klezmer, largely while working in a parking garage in Burlington, Vt., which had nice, cathedral-like acoustics.”

Symons acknowledged, “Of course, no one is truly self-taught – that just means I’ve learned a lot of little things from a lot of different people, without ever having any one teacher or mentor. As for my relationship with the accordion, the damn thing has gradually and sneakily taken over my life. They’ll tell you that you can just pick it up for fun once and awhile and put it down whenever you want, no harm done, but don’t believe them, kids! For many years, I tried to resist accordion clichés and now, in my middle age, I own not one, but two pairs of lederhosen. I started fixing accordions when I moved to New Orleans and there was no one doing it here. Twelve years later, I am sitting in a room in my home with somewhere between 40 and 50 accordions around me, in various states of functionality. The accordions have won.”

About the move to New Orleans, Symons said, “I lived in Vermont for 15 years and was ready for something new. Or, in the case of New Orleans, something old and dirty. I had spent a month in here in 2003 when I was traveling around the country busking in this tiny, ancient Toyota camper. I always thought about going back and trying to live there. Loving New Orleans is like loving a complicated, brilliant, yet self-destructive person. Someone who might be utterly charming one day and destroy a hotel bathroom the next. I still feel like an outsider here most of the time, but I’ve come to terms with that. I’m happy that I’m able to make myself useful to my fellow accordionists by keeping their instruments in working order.”

Symons and his fellow Obliquestra musicians – “Mini-Obliquestra or Obliquestrio,” as Symons quipped – play the folk festival’s South Stage July 21, 11:50 a.m.-12:40 p.m. For the weekend’s full lineup and tickets, visit thefestival.bc.ca.

Klezcadia a June highlight

Veretski Pass – Joshua Horowitz, left, Cookie Segelstein and Stuart Brotman – will be joined by clarinetist Joel Rubin to present the world première of music from their new album, Makonovetsky’s Scion. (photo from Klezcadia)

Victoria will host Klezcadia, a hybrid klezmer and Yiddish culture festival showcasing a West Coast lineup of musical mastery and mavenry. Running June 4-9 in-person and online, there is no charge to attend.

According to festival director Laura Rosenberg, Klezcadia intends to position Victoria as a focal point for klezmer and Yiddish cultural tourism. In conjunction with the music, the six-day event will present classes, workshops, lectures, demonstrations and open rehearsals conducted by artists, language faculty and other guests.

“Klezcadia’s audiences can expect cutting-edge performances – including three world premières – by some of the world’s leading klezmer artists. Additionally, participants at any level of experience will have opportunities to attend classes, workshops and presentations by these same artists and their Yiddish-language colleagues,” Rosenberg told the Independent.

“Our guiding principle is to make the safe in-person attendance experience and the virtual attendance experience as equivalent and rich as current technology allows, as well as to give the same level of respect to all attendees,” she said.

Some of the featured artists will be Veretski Pass, a Bay Area trio that will perform with clarinetist Joel Rubin; Vancouver musician Geoff Berner; and Jeanette Lewicki in her new show as Pepi Litman, an early 20th-century Yiddish theatre drag star.

Comprised of Cookie Segelstein (violin), Joshua Horowitz (19th-century button accordion) and Stuart Brotman (bass), Veretski Pass offers a wide mix of East European influences. Reuniting with Rubin, they will present the world première of music from Makonovetsky’s Scion, their new album for the Borscht Beat label.

Berner, a singer, songwriter, accordionist, novelist and political activist, will stage the première of Second Fleet, the Yiddish song cycle he recently co-wrote with Canadian writer Michael Wex, author of the bestseller Born to Kvetch, a humorous and scholarly look at the Yiddish language.

Lewicki will transmit the spirit of Litman, the original “drag king” of Yiddish theatre, in another première. The Pepi Litman Project will examine the time when a groundbreaking performer literally “wore the pants,” led her own touring troupe, turned taverns into theatres, and tested societal boundaries with her satire. Litman toured Europe and reportedly North America, too, singing, in male garb, at spas, inns and private homes in small towns and large cities alike.

Some of the talks and workshops on offer at the festival are The Barry Sisters: America’s Yiddish Swingsters, with Andy Muchin, the host of the Sounds Jewish radio show on PRX; Yiddish Through Song Lyrics, with Seattle-based Marianne Tatom, a Yiddish teacher and klezmer musician; and Yiddish Through Conversation, with Sasha Berenstein, a multi-instrument musician and fellow with the Yiddish Book Centre’s Yiddish Pedagogy Program.

On June 5, Christina Crowder of the Klezmer Institute will speak about the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project, an international endeavour connecting participants with the work of important klezmer musicians from the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

The festival will take a walk on the vilde side on June 8 with what organizers describe as “musical mash-ups, klezmer-adjacent adventures, song parodies, unusual instruments” and offering the forecast “you never know what will pop up in this clearing in the klezmer/Yiddish jungle.” The evening will feature Seattle neo-vaudevillian Mai Li Pittard, as well as local klezmer bands Kvells Angels and the Klezbians. A new klezmer ensemble, Kvells Angels, gave a concert last fall at the University of Victoria in which they performed works previously unavailable to musicians. The Klezbians, meanwhile, are a well-known band of “chutzpah-licious” musicians, and the group goes back many a year.

Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El, under whose auspices Klezcadia is being produced, will host the finale concert at the Cameron Bandshell, located in Beacon Hill Park. The closing concert will be a gift to the city in celebration of the congregation’s 160th anniversary.

Festival organizers have made a concentrated effort to ensure that all participants enjoy a safe experience. The hybrid environment, they stress, will prioritize the well-being of immunocompromised and high-risk participants, for both those onstage and in the audience. Indoor activities will include protective protocols, such as supplemental air purification, required masking and daily onsite COVID testing.

“Klezcadia was inspired by deep listening to an online meeting of immunocompromised and high-risk musicians and Yiddish-language enthusiasts in early 2023,” Rosenberg said. “During the first two years of the pandemic, they had finally felt included in the klezmer/Yiddish community, since everyone’s only option was to gather online.”

The same groups felt marginalized again when most festivals returned to unmasked, in-person formats. Through dialogue with these groups, Rosenberg realized, Victoria had a chance “to become a host community for an inclusive form of cultural tourism.”

Rosenberg said her 45-year arts administration career came in handy when building a music festival from the ground up; she had already done so with two other festivals. It has been a year’s worth of full-time work to plan the format, bring in the artists and teachers, scout venues, initiate community engagement and, importantly, raise the money.

Locals seem eager for the festival to start. “I am optimistic based on expressions of pride I have heard from Victoria residents, on how quickly Klezcadia’s in-person registration reached capacity and on the eagerness of local tourism-sector businesses to be included in our visitors’ guide,” Rosenberg said.

People from more than a dozen countries have signed up to view events streamed online.

For more information, visit klezcadia.org.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Oktopus tours province

Oktopus performs at Massey Theatre Oct. 21. (photo © Emmanuel Crombez)

Juno-nominated klezmer group Oktopus brings their unique sound and high energy performance to Massey Theatre on Oct. 21. The New Westminster concert is the culmination of a BC tour that includes Oliver, Quadra Island, Duncan, Nanaimo, Salt Spring Island and Victoria.

Oktopus’s eight virtuoso musicians meld various components of classical, Quebecois and jazz repertoires. Their distinctive music is undeniably rooted in the klezmer tradition, reflecting the rich history of a thousand-year-old community, its persecutions and celebrations, tears and laughter, or both at the same time. Musicians of yesteryear incorporated in their repertoire the music they encountered on their journeys and, just like them, the members of Oktopus are inspired by the music they hear throughout their own travels.

The Montreal-based Oktopus octet was formed in 2010 at the initiative of clarinetist Gabriel Paquin-Buki, creator of musical arrangements and several original compositions. (See jewishindependent.ca/blues-klezmer-at-mission.)

After releasing its debut album, Lever l’encre, in 2014, Oktopus released Hapax in 2017, which earned nominations as Instrumental Album of the Year at the Juno Awards and World Music Group of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards. For more on the ensemble, visit oktopus.ca. For tickets to the Oct. 21 concert, go to masseytheatre.com/event/massey-presents-oktopus.

– Courtesy Rona Goodman Music & Publicity

Tzimmes helps close festival

Left to right, Tzimmes’s Saul Berson, Yona Bar Sever and Moshe Denburg perform in the Ukrainian Hall Community Concert and Social on Nov. 5. (photo from Heart of the City)

A festival favourite, Tzimmes, will perform at the 20th Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, taking part in the Nov. 5 Ukrainian Hall Community Concert and Social, which closes out the 100-plus live and online events that take place at more than 40 venues over 12 days.

Presented by Vancouver Moving Theatre with the Carnegie Community Centre, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians and other community partners, this milestone year of the festival – with the theme “Grounded in Community, Carrying it Forward” – starts Oct. 25.

“We have performed at DTES Heart of the City Festival on several occasions over the years,” Tzimmes founder and band leader Moshe Denburg told the Independent.

“November 2008 was the first time and, two years later, in October 2010, we performed again. We were invited a few years ago, in the fall of 2020, but couldn’t make it due to a scheduling conflict.”

In addition, said Denburg, a small group from the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO), which Denburg founded, played the festival in 2011. “The repertoire was, of course, intercultural, but included klezmer and Hebraic pieces as well,” he said. “Every time we played the festival, there was a truly welcoming atmosphere, and I would like to say it is an honour to be part of the mitzvah (good deed) that Heart of the City is performing for the neediest amongst us.”

“For 20 years, the Heart of the City Festival has been grounded in the Downtown Eastside and focused on listening and learning from the cultural practices of the community,” notes the press release. “The festival works with, for and about the Downtown Eastside community to carry forward our community’s stories, ancestral memory, cultural traditions, lived experiences and artistic processes to illuminate pathways of resistance and resilience.” The festival’s mandate “is to promote, present and facilitate the development of artists, art forms, cultural traditions, history, activism, people and great stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.”

The closing event at which a trio of musicians from Tzimmes will play – Denburg (lead vocal/guitar), Yona Bar Sever (lead guitar/backup vocal) and Saul Berson (clarinet/flute/saxophone) – will also feature the Barvinok Choir, Dovbush Dancers and the Vancouver Ukrainian Folk Orchestra. The concert will be opened by cultural speaker Bob Baker of the Squamish Nation and DTES resident, artist, poet and community activist Diane Wood will read “100 Years of Struggle” by the late Sandy Cameron, an historian and poet, among other things, who was very involved in the Downtown Eastside.

About what the Tzimmes trio will play at the concert, Denburg said, “The Tzimmes repertoire is always made up of Jewish music in the larger world context. So, there will be aspects of klezmer and Yiddish song (European), Ladino (Judeo-Spanish/Mediterranean), and pieces in a more Middle Eastern style as well. If anyone wants a primer on our repertoire, they can visit our YouTube page: @BigTzimmesProductions. Have a look/listen to ‘Dror Yikra,’ ‘Cuando’ and ‘Moishe’s Freylakh,’ and you’ll get an idea of what’s to come.”

The Independent last spoke with Denburg in 2021 about Tzimmes’s then-new two-CD album The Road Never Travelled. Since that interview, the group released, in 2022, a remixed and remastered version of their first album, calling it Sweeter and Hotter.

“In 2020, as we were creating our fourth album, The Road Never Travelled, I realized that there was almost enough material for a second disc, but it needed a few more pieces,” said Denburg. “Around that time, my dear friend and band mate, Yona, suggested that I try to remix our debut recording. We always felt that we were constrained by a simpler technology back in 1993, and that certain aspects of the mix could be improved – vocals could be clearer, instruments brought into better relation and so on. Looking around, I found a fine facility in Red Bank, N.J., that specialized in transferring old reel-to-reels to a digital format. The tapes of Sweet and Hot were 27 years old, but they transferred wonderfully to digital tracks.

“On the second disc of The Road Never Travelled, we included several remixed liturgical pieces from Sweet and Hot,” Denburg said, noting that the group continued the process and worked on every track of their 1993 debut album. He said, “The result, we believe, is an enhanced version of Sweet and Hot that does not compromise the original at all; in fact, we humbly submit, the result of all this work is that the sweet parts are even sweeter, and the hot stuff even hotter!”

The closing concert/social of the Heart of the City Festival – called Building Community: 20 Years of Friendship – takes place at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre, with doors opening at 2 p.m. and the concert at 3 p.m. Tickets ($30/$20) are available at eventbrite.ca.

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photo - Among the many Heart of the City events is a month-long exhibit at Carnegie Community Centre of photographer David Cooper’s work for the festival over its 20 years — Among the many Heart of the City events is a month-long exhibit at Carnegie Community Centre of photographer David Cooper’s work for the festival over its 20 years. *(photo from Heart of the City)*

Among the many other events taking place during Heart of the City is an exhibit of photographer David Cooper’s work for the festival over its 20-year history, curated by Vancouver Moving Theatre co-founder Terry Hunter. (For more on Cooper, see jewishindependent.ca/capturing-community-spirit.)

Cooper will attend the Nov. 1, 4 p.m., opening reception in the third-floor gallery at Carnegie Community Centre. The exhibit, which runs to Nov. 30, will feature two to four photos from each of the festival’s 20 years, displayed chronologically with the festival poster for each year.

Organizers said Cooper provided guidelines for selecting the images: “simple, elegant, expressive images with energy, movement and/or emotion that represent the cultural and social diversity of the festival’s programming and people.” The exhibit also will include photos of festival participants who have passed away.

For more information, visit heartofthecityfestival.com.

Learn klezmer dancing

Kol Halev Performance Society in action. (photo from Kol Halev)

On May 7 at White Rock South Surrey Jewish Community Centre, Kol Halev Performance Society is holding a two-hour klezmer dance workshop, which is open to kids 8 and up, adults and seniors. And you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy klezmer – this workshop is open to all!

In the workshop, participants will learn traditional and contemporary klezmer dances (traditional dances of Jewish celebrations originating in Eastern Europe) and read excerpts from The Kugel Valley Klezmer Band by children’s book author Joan Stuchner, in a joyous celebration of music, dance and storytelling. The instructors are Hadas Klinger (dance) and Tom Kavadias (theatre).

Klinger currently teaches recreational Israeli dance to adults at Richmond’s Congregation Beth Tikvah and at the Louis Brier Home, as well as jazz and Israeli dance instruction and choreography to K-6 kids and preteens. She has led Israeli dance workshops and drama workshops at a variety of youth summer camps, and has performed in Miami representing the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver as part of Maccabi Artsfest.

Kavadias has been involved in community theatre since 1985 as an actor and director, and he has worked with adults, teens and children. He has acted with Metro Theatre, Stage Eiren, Theatre North Van, and United Players.

There is no charge for the workshop, which takes place from 3 to 5 p.m., but registration is required by emailing [email protected] or via wrssjcc.org.

White Rock South Surrey Jewish Community Centre is located at 3033 King George Blvd. For questions about the dance program, call Sue Cohene at 604-889-4337. For other questions, call the WRSSJCC at 604-541-9995.

– Courtesy Kol Halev

The complexities of Ruckus

At first listen for a non-aficionado, Beyond the Pale’s Ruckus may sound like a klezmer CD. An excellently executed and enjoyable one, with maybe a little more swing than you’ve heard before, but klezmer – Southeastern European Jewish music, the accordion, violin and clarinet prominent. On second play, however, is that a reggae beat? Did that piece sound like a French folk song in parts? Is that a mandolin?

Beyond the Pale is known for their fusion of klezmer with jazz, bluegrass, reggae and even classical music. Ruckus is the Toronto-based group’s fourth CD. They debuted with Routes in 2001. Their live recording, Consensus (2004), won three awards and Postcards (2009) also won a bunch of awards. While too early to predict, as Ruckus was just released in June, it would not be surprising if more awards were on the way.

Ruckus isn’t a wedding dance soundtrack. Though it has upbeat pieces that make you want to whirl around your kitchen as you cook dinner – “Ispravnost Licne Vizue” and “Batuta,” for example – it evokes a range of emotions. “Moldavsky” has a stately feel, like one of those ballroom waltzes Jane Austen writes about, while “Ruckus in Ralia” has a driving beat and a sense of urgency. “Andale” slows things down and has a contemplative feel, while listening to “Shutka” will take your imagination to the patio of a Parisian café, with its mournful clarinet and accordion, delicately plucked and wavering mandolin strings, and rich violin tones – a tune resembling “My Funny Valentine” seems to make its way into this eclectic composition.

“Oltenilor” sounds like it’d be at home at a hoedown and “Batuta” has a swinging jazz feel to it for the most part, but sounds like a Chassidic niggun at times and morphs into a kind of fast-paced square dance. Both of these songs feature some wicked plucking of the mandolin.

In Eric Stein’s hands, it’s hard to believe that the mandolin is not a traditional klezmer instrument. His original contribution composition-wise on Ruckus is “The Whole Thing,” the idea for which, he told the CJN, he came up with while playing with whole-tone scales. “It’s got tonality that reflects klezmer and Eastern European folk influences, but it’s also got a funky kind of groove.” And it is definitely based on whole-tone scales.

Six of the 12 songs on Ruckus are originals, while the others are arrangements of traditional melodies. All of the musicians – Bret Higgins (bass), Milos Popovic (accordion), Martin van de Ven (clarinet) and Aleksandar Gajic (violin) – either composed an original piece or participated in the arranging. They are a tight ensemble who play around with tempo and style with such ease that the complexity of what they’ve created isn’t what you’ll first notice. And that’s what makes their music so good.

Songs with meaning

Geoff Berner brings his hard-hitting, eminently entertaining klezmer to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival on July 16 and 17. (photo by Fumie Suzuki)

Geoff Berner doesn’t mince words. An excellent musician, he puts them to melodies that range from mournful to joyous to angry, sometimes all in one song, sometimes all at the same time. There are lyrics that inspire and those that disturb. Every song makes you think, feel, move. Berner will no doubt draw an enthusiastic crowd at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival next weekend.

His latest CD, We Are Going to Bremen to be Musicians (2015, Oriente Musik/COAX), was produced by Socalled, aka Josh Dolgin, who also contributes piano and vocals to the recording. The title song is a reinterpretation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Town Musicians of Bremen.

“I had an urge to retell that fable,” he told the Independent in an email interview. “At the time, I didn’t know why. I just became obsessed with it. It’s so strange. It’s a kids story about talking animals who are condemned to death but instead run away, with the plan of becoming professional musicians. Then they drive some thieves from their den, and take over the den and all the stolen goods. ‘The End.’ What?”

The animals in Berner’s song, who “people say” are “too used up to be allowed to live,” head to Bremen to be musicians, “to speak of death another day and have a sacred feast with what we stole from the thieves.” The donkey fearlessly leads his small troupe, “realism is something he’s not needing. People talk like they understand the world but they may find, when it kicks them in the head, it’s liable to change their mind.” The rooster, meanwhile, “thinks he can predict the future. Actually, he’s just a rooster. If he could read his own entrails he would see the comfort-giving chicken soup that is his destiny.” Finally, the “dog is full of moral confusion, but the cat is under no illusion. The dog did his killing out of loyalty, and for pay, but the cat knows why he would have done it anyway.” The animals are on their way to Bremen to be musicians: “They’re going to build a statue of us in the square. To commemorate the fact that we were never there.”

Berner told CBC that he thought that his obsession with the story was connected to the loss of both of his parents from cancer within a short amount of time of each other (2013-2014). “Grappling with the story,” he said, “was me trying to find a back door to processing what was going on in my life at the time … contemplating and dealing with mortality of people who were really great parents and very important to me.”

Raised in Vancouver in the Reform and Conservative traditions, Berner’s lyrics, while mostly English, are steeped in Yiddish culture and his style is most definitely klezmer.

“My grandparents spoke Yiddish,” he explained to the JI, “but it was not seen as something worth teaching to their children. So, to a certain extent, I’m trying to reclaim my heritage. We listened to some klezmer music at home and at Hebrew school, and a lot of other stuff, too.

“I originally learned music playing improvised blues piano. I love all kinds of music but, by bringing klezmer into my songwriting, I get to connect with a part of myself that I’d otherwise feel was missing from my life. And I feel strongly that there’s a radical left-wing Jewish culture that deserves to live, as much or in fact more than the nutso Orthodox tradition that represses women and worships a toxic, murderous form of Zionism.”

Berner has strong opinions, that’s for sure, and his songs can be highly critical, no doubt – just ask Gregor Robertson or Stephen Harper, among many others who have made their way into Berner’s discography. But, while he may be tilting at windmills, Berner is trying to rouse action and, with his music, he is trying to do something himself to change the world. Which is why a description of Berner in the Ottawa Citizen as “eternally cynical” doesn’t quite ring true, nor do other similar categorizations.

“I guess I get more of a thrill than a lot of people out of somebody saying flat-out, unvarnished, just how bad a thing really is,” Berner told the JI. “Does that mean I’m a cynic? I don’t know. I like the way George Orwell defined himself, as ‘an independent man of the left.’ That’s how I would define myself, politically. Am I cynical if I believe that a lot of public figures are lying and don’t have the public interest at heart? OK, so be it. Am I cynical if I don’t believe that the narrative of the human story is ‘progress upwards’? OK, so be it. I believe that there’s genuine, eternal divinity residing in the act of fighting the good fight, even if you strongly suspect you’re going to lose. To me, God lives there, so I don’t need optimism in order to feel hope.”

One of the most fun and, at the same time, discomforting songs on Berner’s latest recording is “Dance and Celebrate,” which doesn’t just talk about celebrating the “misfortunes of people we hate” but wishes misfortunes on people, and lumps together the likes of Joseph Stalin, Margaret Thatcher, Ariel Sharon and Harper.

“That song is more about allowing yourself to feel so-called ‘negative’ emotions like, for instance, white-hot, burning hatred, without judging yourself,” Berner explained. “I’m a big believer in that. What you then do with those feelings, that’s another thing. I think the Irish peace process is a good model for other conflicts because, in that case, instead of demanding a utopian, inhuman level of forgiveness from enemies, it asked less of people. Let’s not worry about whether or not we love each other, or whether or not, deep down, everyone is the same, blah, blah, blah. Let’s just begin by not actually killing each other – today. Then take it from there. If we acknowledge our real emotions, truthfully, maybe that’s a better way to begin improving the situation than to ask for the moon.”

Realism – unnecessary to the Bremen-headed donkey and so many of us – is at Berner’s core, and it sets him apart. A Georgia Straight article earlier this year was headlined, “Geoff Berner finds the humor in being a Lotusland outsider.”

“I don’t know if I really am on the outside – I have loads of privileges – but I feel like I’m on the outside,” he told the JI. “I feel apart from this culture that we’re living in, which seems floridly insane to me. In this world, there are half the birds that there were the year when I was born. Half the birds are gone. It doesn’t seem to matter to anyone. People go to plastic surgery and pay thousands of dollars to cut themselves up to look more like magazine covers. Christmas. Weddings. ‘Camping.’ What the hell? None of the things that seem central to this culture make any sense to me. I need an alternative culture to belong to, so I don’t just feel like everyone else is right and I’m a monster. So, my writing is a way to try to be part of building that. The feedback I get is that some people appreciate it. And, of course, some people don’t.”

Many people have appreciated We Are Going to Bremen to be Musicians, it seems. In addition to the recording, Berner created a book of the tale, with illustrations by Tin Can Forest. Tin Can Forest Press’ first printing of it, published in 2015, sold out; the second printing will be available next month.

Berner has also written a novel, Festival Man (Dundurn Press, 2013) – wherein “[m]averick music manager Campbell Ouiniette makes a final destructive bid for glory at the Calgary Folk Festival” – which was well received, and he has a second novel on the way, called The Fiddler is a Good Woman, expected in late 2017.

On Berner’s website, the Bremen story is described as “an absurd tale of irrational hope and optimism in the face of horror, and that’s where the story connects with the songs on the album.” Berner describes the album “as a compendium of strategies against despair.”

He’s right – as serious as Bremen is, it’s uplifting. There is much humor, as song titles such as “I Don’t Feel so Mad at God When I See You in Your Summer Dress,” readily attest, and much with which Vancouverites in particular will relate – take the song “Condos,” for example. And where else will you hear David Bowie’s “Always Crashing in the Same Car” in Yiddish?

Berner is one of more than 60 performers scheduled to perform at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival this year. The festival, which takes place at Jericho Beach July 15-17, also includes Israel’s Yemen Blues with Ravid Kahalani. For a 2011 interview with Kahalani, click here. For the full lineup and tickets of the folk festival, visit thefestival.bc.ca.

An aerobic experience

Daniel Brenner’s klezmer aerobics workout and performance was inspired by the Klezmorims. (photo from Daniel Brenner)

Rabbi Daniel Brenner – who grew up in the small Jewish community of Charlotte, N.C. – has come up with an aerobic workout set to klezmer music.

Brenner graduated from the Reconstruction Rabbinical College which, at the time, was led by Rabbi Art Green. He began performing in 1987 with the late comic legend Chris Farley at the Ark Improvisational Theatre, and has been doing theatre ever since.

In rabbinical school, Brenner created the one-man-show Faster, Rabbi, Drill! Drill!, which won an All Out Arts New York playwriting award (2000). He also wrote a series of Chassidic folktales/plays for Philadelphia’s Theatre Ariel and has had a play produced by New York’s Vital Theatre, in addition to producing a handful of Purim shpiels. Today, he performs regularly with the band Midnight Nosh, on guitar, and lives with his wife Lisa and their three children in Montclair, N.J.

“Growing up, my home was a place that other people came to experience Judaism,” Brenner told the Independent. “There were no other Jewish families on my street, so my home was a site where many non-Jewish people experienced Judaism for the first time.”

photo - A big part of Daniel Brenner’s inspiration came from the Klezmorim’s Streets of Gold — A big part of Daniel Brenner’s inspiration came from the Klezmorim’s Streets of Gold. *(photo from Daniel Brenner)*

Brenner’s love of music came early on, as he listened to a mix of Shlomo Carlebach and contemporary American folk. In the 1980s, Brenner’s parents went to a Klezmorim concert and came home with their record Streets of Gold.

“I was ecstatic listening to the music,” said Brenner. “I couldn’t believe that we had music that had so much soul. As a kid, I was enthralled with Michael Jackson – music you can dance to. But, when I heard the Klezmorim, I was like, this music is just as good for dance. I loved it.”

While working out and listening to klezmer, Brenner thought of how amazing it would be to lead a class using this music. Originally, he thought of pairing it with Zumba, but then decided that klezmer aerobics would be the best fit.

As he worked on the idea, he realized this could be more than just another class. “I really tried to think of what story it wants to tell,” he said. “That really helped me get to the place where it was a full narrative, and a full show about the relationship between someone in the 1980s and someone in the 1880s.

“I thought about it in terms of the two great shifts in human past civilization, recent history – the shift away from agricultural, industrial, rural to urban that happened in the 1880s, and then also the 1980s, the shift between the industrial era and the digital era. I wanted the story that I told to be about that shift.”

Brenner started researching moves that would reflect, as closely as possible, the 1880 dance fashion. He discovered Steven Lee Weintraub, who teaches Jewish traditional dance, and engaged him in private lessons. Brenner videotaped these lessons and practised intensely to get a good handle on the movements and to effectively incorporate them into his repertoire.

“I told my beloved, I told her, keep in mind that I want to do this over the next decade, so she understands I’m definitely thinking long-term about what I want to do with the project,” he explained. “My goal really will be to work together with local klezmer bands in various places around the world to create an experience for people – to perform a show as a way to not only teach dance and tell the story, but as a way to connect people to the local klezmer scene who may not experience it otherwise.”

Brenner has created ’80s Klezmer Aerobics, a family-friendly, interactive dance-storytelling workout wherein “the 1880s meets the 1980s.” In the show, Brenner plays an aerobics instructor and leads an audience-participation workout, as he tells the story of a dancer, Levi, and his apprentice. The audience learns the traditional Old Badchen dances that Levi learns and creates when he runs off to Warsaw.

“I feel that the fun ’80s Klezmer Aerobics and the experience is going to be a draw for a lot of people,” he said. “Then, I also feel like giving people the opportunity to hear live klezmer music is a rare thing. In anyway I can, I want to help people dig the stuff I dug when I was a boy in N.C., putting that record on for the first time.”

In addition to the family-friendly version, Brenner has been considering splitting the experience into two parts – one as a matinée for the family and one in the evening, attracting a different crowd.

Since being performed last November, there have been a few shows in different venues so far. Brenner is working with some Canadian friends to create shows in Canada, having received a few inquiries about it from Jewish community centres.

“I’ve also heard from New York, Atlanta and North Carolina,” he said. “I hope to take it around the Jewish world.”

For more information, visit klezmeraerobics.com or check out Klezmer Aerobics’ Facebook page. There are also videos available on YouTube.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

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.

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.