Batya Levine was raised in the Modern Orthodox community in Teaneck, New Jersey with a childhood full of music and community values. “My parents both love music and my dad sells guitars for a living. So we really grew up in a very songful, soulful version of Judaism, where singing and music were an ever-present part of the fabric of our life,” recounted Levine. Parting ways with the community, Levine would begin exploring other facets of Judaism and the queer community during college.

“Growing up, I was not at all known for my musicality or singing. I was just a person who loved singing,” said Levine. A series of fateful experiences around this time would center music in Levine's life. Two examples are their exploration of Renewal Judaism and participation in programming at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Not hesitating to admit their shy disposition, Levine remembers realizing music could be a conduit to share their voice in the Jewish community.

Levine gives a lot of credit early in their musical awakening to what they call “one-liner” songs. Musicians like Rabbis Shir Meira Feit and Shefa Gold, had many songs whose melodies would ecstatically hang out on one word or line of liturgy. Melismatic songs like these have a refreshing ease of access to people looking to explore music or prayer. "Growing up, there was no model exactly. And then being in these spaces, I realized one-liner songs have a bar to entry which was easier to reach. It wasn't that I decided that I was gonna write music, but I started, you know, trying out leading one song — even if I was still so nervous in the song circle.”

Community beginnings, perpetuating community

Nervous or not, these experiences started Levine off on a musical journey. They credit the support of a community of peers who were on a similar path of exploration. Friends and collaborators like Aly Halpert, Anat Hochberg, Molly Bajgot, and Sol Weiss among others provided a safe and passionate space for feedback and growth. (Check out this group album, Levine and many of these collaborators co-produced in 2022!)

Levine would go on to co-found the organization Let My People Sing! and also involve themself in the first cohort of the Rising Song Institute. They recorded their first album, “Karov,” on March 1, 2020 just before the COVID pandemic swept the United States. Much to their surprise, Levine noticed their first album reaching far beyond their friends and acquaintances. “It was pretty significant to watch it bloom and reach people beyond my immediate community,” said Levine.

Explaining their musical ethos, Levine conjures up an allegorical shtetl. Contrary to what one might assume, however, they don't see themself following the tradition of klezmorim. "The lineage that I feel a part of in this sort of metaphor is the old woman traveling around all the houses, singing to the people who are sick — song as medicine and song as a tool for healing and moving energy and davening. That's the part of music and song that I feel I really resonate with,” said Levine. They also see traces of tkhines in their music. Tkhines were Yiddish devotionals traditionally written for women who often weren't given the opportunity to learn the traditional prayer language of Hebrew.

A project to eclipse itself

They would begin work on “Yivarechecha” in 2023, working with Yoshie Fruchter as their co-producer. The recording session for the album — which Levine recalls as a beautifully emotional event — took place around the North American total solar eclipse in April 2024, which also fell around Rosh Chodesh Nisan. Much of what the album means they still believe is a mystery, leaving room for interpretation following the album's release. They hope, however, that the album can be healing in the painful disruptive times many are living through where, as Levine put it, “internal tearing is mirroring external tearing.”

While certainly mysterious at times, Levine's lyricism and melodies are refreshingly forthright and poetically intriguing, shining through above all in “Yivarechecha.” Much of the vocals in the voice-centered album have a tasteful bluesy intrigue, celebrating and building on a folk idiom common in contemporary American Jewish religious music. Between original lyrics and settings on well-known liturgy, Levine certainly demonstrates their knack both for creation and interpretation.

“I feel like I went through this journey, struggling with my faith about this album every step of the way,” said Levine. “It's a mystery to me what exactly this album is about, and I think we're gonna find out the more that people listen to it.” Levine emphasizes ultimately how the album was a community effort. “Creating art is such a vulnerable process and it feels like a group project” said Levine, after giving thanks to many collaborators: over 500 donors, their family's support, queer community and many more.

“Yivarechecha” will have two release concerts in January 2025. One on January 15 at Philadelphia's Germantown Jewish Center and another to be announced the following day in Brooklyn.

Click here to purchase “Yivarechecha" on Bandcamp

Around that time the two shows I’d been binging were Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. And as I was contending with these all. these questions, (whither klezmer? when klezmer? who klezmer? where klezmer? what klezmer?) klezmer coincidentally made diegetic appearance in both shows (diegetic meaning it existed not as a soundtrack for the audience, but was interacted with by the characters). It’s always a delight to run across my niche passion in broader culture, but I… I was irked.

What’s the big deal?!

Well, dear reader, cute clips, no? I am tickled by these little blips, little clips, but they both mythologize the idea of klezmer in a way I don’t like.

The Mrs. Maisel program takes place around 1960 and Brooklyn Nine-Nine is ostensibly taking place during its release in the 2010s, but klezmer, as a popular word used for a genre of music, only came about in the late 70s when Zev Feldman popularized the term as a genre (before this, the “klezmer“ was the word for the musician). Gotcha, Mrs. Maisel! Even though a handful of academics used the term by 1960, the idea that Mrs. Maisel or her secular audience would recognize or use the term klezmer is incorrect. Bad dramaturgy.

But I hear you reader. Okay, Miri, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in its foibles of Jewish nostalgia, got this one wrong, but Brooklyn Nine-Nine is more than three decades past klezmer music’s linguistic inception. While this may be true, the character Jake Peralta refers in an equally fallacious manner to “my grandma’s old klezmer records.“ Doing the math for Peralta who, like his actor Andy Samberg, is ostensibly between being a millennial and Gen X, his grandma would be a part of the Silent Generation at the youngest.

Grandma would’ve been buying these records in the 80s and beyond and would’ve only been able to start collecting her “old records,“ well into adulthood (I haven’t been able to identify if the visible LP in the clip is real or not). For grandma, that collection is the klezmer revival of the varied Jewish music (not called “klezmer music“) she might’ve grown up listening to.

I’m being overly-dramatic here, but it’s important to point out that klezmer music is a neologism, a young term.

Correcting the record

Going back even further in the past, the movies Maestro and Woman in Gold also use klezmer. In Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein around 1950 refers to how when he began pursuing music as a child his father “imagined [him] a klezmer.“ In Woman in Gold, a klezmer quartet was hired to portray the wedding band in a 1930s Viennese-Jewish wedding.

Simply put, Maestro got it right. For all the panning the movie’s received, Maestro got this one detail right. Bernstein’s father, coming from the Pale of Settlement, likely would know the term “klezmer,“ and know that it referred at the time to a type of person therefore he “Imagined [Lenny] a klezmer.“ For Woman in Gold, it has the opposite issue pushing Jewish musical culture to be monolithic. Vienna was a famously “assimilated“ city for Jews, especially for higher society ones who would be obsessing over a Klimt painting as are portrayed in Woman in Gold. They would not have hired a klezmer band for a wedding — that was the music of the riff-raff, hoi polloi Jews. But why is this happening?

Wither klezmer? From whether did it come?

A must-see for klezmer obsessives is a new movie “The Klezmer Project.“ The title is translated from the Spanish “Adentro mío estoy bailando“ (“Inside myself, I’m dancing“). In this movie, the young Argentine-Jewish Leandro gets caught up in a search for those good old klezmer melodies, going to Eastern Europe to look for them, only to find complication.

Rather than finding a mythical well full to the brim of pure unadulterated, old world, archived, totally-your-bubbies’ klezmer, Leandro finds some musicians who are just kind of playing the music they’re playing. Leandro doesn’t really find klezmer let alone Jewish music, he finds musicians who lived through complex history playing the music they like to play. Some of it they point to as being Jewish in particular, some not, but it could all potentially be klezmer through modern ears.

He felt emotion towards this idea that Jewish music was discrete and coherent and could be “found,” just like so many of us feel emotion when searching for our roots. But just like the various musicians and traditions that paved the way for modern klezmer music weren’t always klezmer music, an immigrant ancestor’s experience isn’t encapsulated by their name appearing on a ship’s arrival manifest.

Klez-who even cares?

Having honest and accurate cultural portrayals of music is important for music to keep evolving. In an algorithm-AI world, it’s too easy to freeze musical genres in time, when they’ve always been complicated and evolving.

I made this show-biz point as one meagre part in a lecture titled “Klezmemes!“ To those not overly invested in music, it certainly came across as the hand-wringing of a geriatric 22-year-old.

Post-lude

One of my favorite books is The Autobiography of Miles Davis and one is struck when reading it, just how human-centered the development of hard bop, modal jazz and jazz fusion were. There was intense passion, there were joyful transcendent jams and performances, there were arguments and judgments. Each came about in a different point in Miles’ life and was rooted in so many gorgeous and troubling circumstances.

And yet, today we have cynical producers mass producing jazz tracks. This article by Ted Gioia is elucidating to the amount of shitty producers on Spotify farming listens through an abundance of fake artist profiles. This, to me, is pure evil. It’s pure evil and we will begin to see it more with AI music’s accelerating development.

If this is your ideal of music, go forth and eat your slop — set your “vibes,“ cultivate your “aesthetic.“ Forget about the innovators for all I care. I, however, will stay where the living breathing musicians are toiling.

A musician can have copyright over their music for two lifetimes and day, but don’t hold your breath for honor and respect.

The mythologies so often promoted about the pure origins of music ironically contain a complete disregard for the artists who barely ever have purism in mind. This mythology invites an institutional legalism and rule-obsession about music as if there were a Ten Commandments of klezmer. This ironically dishonors the very innovators of those supposed rules by diluting their experience into a few scales.

The same belittlement that’s happening to jazz can easily happen to klezmer. Klezmer is not a list of rules to check. It’s not proper instrumentation. It’s not the proper balance of clarinet krekhts. It’s not proper scales played correctly.

Klezmer is the will, the feelings and the spirit of a community, many members of whom have intensely strong, but divergent feelings about proper instrumentation, the proper balance of clarinet krekhts and proper scales played properly.

A(-)religious beginning

In 2009, Lainie Fefferman was in grad school for music composition. Fresh into Barack Obama's first term in office, two intersecting discussions caught Fefferman's attention in the news. Over the previous years, gay marriage had begun to be legalized on the state level, starting in Massachusetts and Connecticut. A debate over its federal legality was becoming a more practical hot-button issue. As well, conspiracy theories surrounding the nominally Christian Obama's supposed Muslim faith as well as a growing popularity of atheism and the increase in religious "nones" provoked many right-wing pundits into putting their faith front and center in public discourse.

These discussions had many right-wing religious pundits arguing against the legalization of gay marriage based on the Old Testament and Levitical religious scripture. Fefferman notes that many of her peers fit into the skeptical atheist trend of the time, but ironically for her, who grew up understanding herself as a secular Jew, spirituality was actually of greater interest. "When I was in high school in college, it would have been easier to tell my friends I'm a Wiccan," said Fefferman, reflecting on the skepticism towards institutional religions at the time.

Despite this, the cynical use of religion by political pundits further provoked Fefferman's sincere interest in the topic.

[Lainie Fefferman performs music from her 2023 album “White Fire“]

Here the album is!

Fast forward to 2024 and Fefferman released “Here I Am,“ consisting of 10 different tracks touching on different stories and aspects of the Torah she’d been pondering for years. Fefferman describes the album as having three different aspects of scripture, “three buckets“ as she puts it, that it draws upon. The first "bucket" as Fefferman describes it has to do with the more difficult to stomach aspects of scripture. 

"I really thought that I'm gonna try and emphasize the crap out of these stories. I just want to hate it, but I'm gonna try so hard to empathize with every different person in this story. That's Lot's daughters, that's a lot of Leviticus and also the Binding of Isaac. Even Moses' civil war that killed 1000s of Jews. You know, I'm gonna try real hard to think what I would do if I were this person. How do I empathize with this?" — Lainie Fefferman

The first more visceral bucket gives way to a second bucket of stories Fefferman is more unabashedly enamored by. She mentions Abraham's bargain with God on behalf of the citizens of Sodom. 

"The impudence of Abraham bargaining with God. To tell God 'you're amazing, you know, better than me, for real, but 40 really is the same as 30, right?' I really think of chutzpah; like that is the origin story of chutzpah. I don't know if it's the combination of impudence and righteousness, but also the pragmatism and wileyness. I feel like that's my Judaism, like it's not taking up the sword and battling the enemies." — Lainie Fefferman

The final bucket for Fefferman is more unexpected. It includes much of the Book of Numbers and Leviticus and the dry way much of them list sacrificial processes and censuses of able-bodied men. For Fefferman, however, there is real emotional power in the fact that people cared enough to record these things. Pivoting to the music, it reminds her of one of her greatest musical inspirations.

"It's important, but it's also sort of like sorbet. This has been the tradition of Bang on a Can list pieces. like 'Lost Objects' or 'Carbon Copy Building.' We're just gonna make a song out of a list. There's power in the sense of motion and repetitiveness, but ultimately, it's still not quite sorbet, but it gives you a bit of a rest to just enjoy the poetry and the repetition." — Lainie Fefferman

Music to be to

Stylistically the music is varied, going off in a number of different directions in service of these different stories Fefferman was evoking. There are bluesy sections, melismatic choral notes, minimalist inspirations and more. Fefferman excitedly recounted the list of wonderful collaborators whose varied skills and backgrounds helped to inspire and form the album into what it would become. This included the new music ensemble TRANSIT and a number of vocalists — Martha Cluver, Melissa Hughes, Caroline Shaw, Charlotte Mundy and Meaghan Burke.

"Here I Am", much like any worth-its-while religious text, blurs the lines between the beautiful, the ethereal, the harsh and the confusing, yet somehow makes it through with a cohesive experience that knows what is — that it's there. "It's not easy listening…it's tricky," Fefferman notes. Tricky or not, her album is an astounding midrash for these core texts in the Jewish community, giving a fresh sonic interpretation on Judaism from an unlikely student of religion.

Click here to purchase "Here I Am" on Bandcamp

Mixed heritage, mixed music

Yosef Goldman grew up in New York City. Growing up in a mixed Ashkenazi-Mizrahi home, he describes the eclecticism of his Jewish spiritual upbringing. "I was in a lot of different orthodox synagogues spaces from Hasidic shuls to Modern Orthodox synagogues to Carlebach shuls and Mizrahi synagogues in in Brooklyn," says Goldman. Musically he would grow up studying music and piano, but central for Goldman was the time he spent in choirs.

Yoni Battat, like Goldman, is of mixed Ashkenazi-Mizrahi heritage and also describes an eclecticism of Jewish experience growing up in Connecticut. "I went to a Solomon Schechter Day School, but found myself in a lot of different spaces, because I played music for services… Our main synagogue was a Chabad synagogue, so I also had a lot of exposure to Orthodox spaces and had my bar mitzvah at Chabad." 

Goldman would become increasingly interested in sacred music in particular. He would grow up to study to become a cantor and rabbi and in the process become heavily invested in singing and drumming in particular. While Goldman was delving into worship music, Battat explored the instrumental realm. Battat has a laundry list of genres and ensembles he got to explore from high school through a graduate program in classical viola. From jazz to klezmer to Persian music and salsa among others, Battat has played a lot of styles.

Finding affinity at the Rising Song Institute

Where Battat and Goldman would converge before meeting was a shared interest in Middle Eastern music which they both have made a point of exploring throughout their lives. 

"It wasn't until I was 16 that I heard traditional and older Arab music. I also had a lesson that exposed me for the first time to microtonal tuning systems of the Middle East. And that was really formative for me. Even though I didn't grow up with it, I think that challenge really shaped me to try and learn this music and internalize it. Despite it being my own heritage and having an Iraqi family. It still feels like I'm coming at it as an outsider, even if it's my own culture." — Yoni Battat

Goldman notes Ronnie Ish-Ran as a particularly important teacher as he began to explore the vocal side of maqam and other Arab music traditions. 

Goldman and Battat would then meet through participation in the Rising Song Institute (RSI), the musical wing of Hadar, an organization dedicated to enlivening Jewish spiritual life. Goldman met RSI's founder Joey Weisenberg in 2010 and has been heavily involved in the institute's programming since its inception. 

"Simu Lev" and intentional Mizrahi music outreach

Battat and Goldman both describe "Simu Lev" and the Kedmah project coming about as a natural outcome of working together through RSI. Both were supporting each other's musical endeavors and had the same shared passion for Middle Eastern styles and exploring Mizrahi music. The Kedmah project at a certain point seemed inevitable.

"Simu Lev" ended up being an album comprised of contemporary manifestations of Mizrahi prayer melodies. As Goldman describes, the album is neither strictly traditional nor simply fusion music. While "Simu Lev" doesn't strictly adhere to traditional instrumentation and uses a lot of modern musical and recording techniques, it also isn't an exercise in genre blending for the sake of genre blending. It preserves the traditional techniques, performance and spirit of Mizrahi and Arab music styles, but is revamped for a contemporary audience.

Describing the recording session, Goldman mentions the spiritual intention with which he, Battat and their collaborators approached it. "We had a table in the main room with photographs of ancestors and teachers and also physical artifacts, such as siddurim from Edot HaMizrach that belong to ancestors. There was a cherished Hebrew-Arabic dictionary that belonged to somebody's grandparents, a Yemenite silver filigree Kiddush cup, a mold for ma'amoul pastries…it felt very prayerful," said Goldman.

"The intention is Kedmah will be a musical and educational initiative where we will share Mizrahi music from concerts to interactive song sessions to workshops and classes," explains Goldman. 

Knowing that outreach will inevitably reach a broader audience than just the Mizrahi community, Goldman and Battat both have a sense of being intentional and authentic in sharing the Mizrahi tradition they are stewarding. "It's not plug and play," says Goldman, knowing that non-Western music styles are placed inside of Western frameworks in the name of education.

"My hope is that this leads people to have some curiosity," says Battat. "I think by coming in person and being able to present this music in an authentic form, I'm hoping that we can help to build more cultural literacy in our communities and more appreciation of the diversity within our Jewish community." 

Click here to purchase “Simu Lev” on Bandcamp

Our group isn’t currently playing together, but this album is a culmination of our time playing together at Lawrence University (most of us graduated last year). All of these recordings are deep in my heart and remind me of so many people I love to make music with.

This song in particular was an adaptation I made (comment if you know which song it’s based off!) The album will also include two song parodies titled “If I were a rich trans" and “YIVO“ along with a handful of live recordings of our takes on classic klezmer tunes.

I have so many beautiful feelings, so much pride about this group and the wonderful people in it (some of which I outlined in this article and some which were featured in this spotlight by our university).

One idea which is pertinent to the artistry in this album and part of my own personal credo as a musician is that you always have to be figuring out something. I do not care what the setting is, for me music is always about courageous exploration rather than precise recitation.

When I started this group, I could not play the keyboard to save my life. Yet, I was the one teaching most of the music. Even as all of my bandmates were more proficient on their instruments than I on keyboard, we made it work because we were all dedicated to that process of figuring out.

We figured out how to play together. We figured out how to play the music. We figured out how to accompany. We figured out how to listen. We figured out a group style. Many of these things happened not through strict directions, but from the implicit agreement that we’d all just try some stuff out. Maybe some of it would work, maybe it wouldn’t.

We trusted each others’ artistic inclinations enough that we arrived at arrangements that may not seem too special on the face of it. There is no historically pre-ordained instrumentation or musical stylizing which is reminiscent of genre anachronism x or making an explicit commentary on topic y using extended traditional techniques z. It was just us, our instruments, what felt good to us, and what we thought would make the audience excited.

I’ve listened to a lot of klezmer music and a lot of different performances/arrangements of the same standards from the klezmer canon. Regardless of my obvious bias, I do think from a certain angle, my groups’ intuitive arrangements, which are on a surface level unremarkable, feel imbued with such energy and originality that can only come from these two years of some of the most beautiful community I’ve had the privilege to be a part of in my time on haShem’s grine velt — two years of this group trusting each other to figure it out and to have a good time.

(Also, I’m referring, confusingly, more so to most of the other tracks on the album, the one included in this article is one of the more intensely cultivated/arranged)

So often, advanced and professional musicians are technically proficient enough that they can truly just walk into a gig, play the notes and leave. Practically for many, music is a full-time job where constant mistakes don’t get you anywhere. I have endless respect for this. I also believe that true creativity and truly progressive music comes from embracing inaccuracies, mistakes and amateurishness while you’re figuring it out.

If there are a million Fabergé eggs out there, the most creative thing to do in my opinion isn’t spending years painstakingly making your own Fabergé egg with little personal design details you can point out to anyone who cares. Creativity for me is tossing some expired eggs onto a canvas, something you’ve never known anyone to do, just because you had the wild thought to do so. Then do that about a thousand more times till you’ve figured out that way to do it that’s emotionally satisfying to you. Then without realizing it, presto-chango, you’ve pioneered an art form.

Nobody in the Klezmommies held their nose high (like many “jazz jocks“ who need you to “get on their level“), nobody quit in frustration. We learned to not just play notes on a page, but to explore pieces together. We had hard days, we had easy days. We cancelled rehearsals during finals week, we got out the string and cork board before a performance. I got wired off of cold brew and manically explained screeds of nonsense. Thanks to my bandmates’ patience and sincere honesty, I learned a lot about how to lead with respect, thought and care.

College was a hard time for many reasons (socially, directionally, academically, emotionally, communally, personally etc, etc, etc). I always knew, however, that if I’d had a hard day. If I felt I had no energy left. If I felt I had no love or joy in me to express, a rehearsal with my Klezmommies would leave me in stitches and with a heart so incredibly full. I have no doubt their friendship and our two years of shared memories will forever be an unmatched privilege. I miss it and them so incredibly much.

personnel

Georgia Chau - Clarinet

Alex DeBello - Fiddle

Mikayla Frank-Martin - Trombone

Celia Goldstein - Viola

Zemirah Willow Higgins XIV - Vocals

Ryan Saladin - Percussion

Eviatar Shlosberg - Trumpet

Miri Villerius - Piano

Marya Wydra - Bass

Musical klezpanion

It has never been uncommon to find me listening to music in some way. In elementary school I would spend hours upon hours in my room with my iPod plugged into my little pink speaker-radio combo. Blasting the latest song I was obsessed with. Coming up with, often silly, interpretive dances and ways to move with the music. This routine was a vital part of my day to day life, and was immeasurably important to me.

As I grew up my love of music, and how I showed it, morphed with me through many different stages. Pandora running near constantly on my iPod Touch in middle school (either through earbuds or its speakers), to eventually settling on using Spotify on my phone. By high school, I nearly always had headphones in — It didn’t matter if I was having a conversation with someone, walking in-between classes at school, or (depending on how lenient the teacher was) sitting in class. I have always felt better having some form of music playing in the background. Having music on in the background gives me something to focus on, to move to, and over all helps me think as I go about my day. 

As time went on the more I started seeking out genres and songs that helped explain the world around me, represented my interests, and my emotions. Before I had access to the internet, and the beautiful world of music, all I had access to was whatever early 2000s pop music my mom had downloaded for herself on the iPod she gave me. With time and increasing access to platforms like YouTube, Pandora, and eventually Spotify. I was increasingly able to branch out my music tastes and start discovering what I liked. This typically was some type of folk music. No matter how my tastes changed throughout the years, folk music was the one constant in my listening. 

Eureklæzmer!

I was first introduced to klezmer my senior year of high school. A friend of mine had recently stumbled upon Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird and made me listen to their music. I was instantly obsessed. It was truly love at first listen, I couldn’t get enough. All I wanted to do was listen and force every single person I knew to listen as well. Klezmer music enticed me and drew me in a way I had never felt before.

Klezmer was a combination of so many things I loved. From my increasing interest in Jewish culture to my love of exploring different languages like Russian and Yiddish to my love of clarinet and accordion. I had never found music before that so beautifully combined all these things I was in love with and passionate about. Klezmer spoke to me in a way no other music had before and it was absolutely beautiful.

Klezmoving and listening

The main thing I listen for in music is motion. This motion, while separate from the audio itself, is often interlinked with it. When I listen to music I can both feel, and in a complex way, see the motion of the music that is playing. In terms of feeling it often presents itself as a way I want, and almost need, to move while listening. With what I see then often being connected to what I feel. For klezmer this motion is a back-and-forth figure eight. Comparatively a waltz is a more curved semi circle back-and-forth motion, but jazz typically feels entirely flat. That back-and-forth motion is one of my favorite feelings in the universe. The way the music sways is incredibly calming and comforting. 

One of the major drives of my love for that back-and-forth motion and specifically the klezmer figure eight motion is how it perfectly complements stimming. Stimming is repetitive self-stimulating behavior or motions used to self-soothe, express emotion, as well as help regulate a person's nervous system. Stimming is something that has always been important in my life, long before I had the words to explain what it was I was experiencing.

I have always loved rocking back and forth when I am nervous or bored, moving my hands in shapes and circles to whatever I was listening to, or flapping my hands when excited or happy. Klezmer meshes perfectly for me with stimming. The back-and-forth gives me a pace to stim to. Both the rocking and the figure eight motion give me a set way to move my hands along with the music. All while being beautiful and culturally impactful. Having these meshed together in such a meaningful way  further enhances and complements each one, all while also being beautiful, meaningful, and culturally impactful. It’s something I truly love and value.

I didn’t quite have the words to express my relationship to klezmer at first, but ever since I discovered it, it’s been my top genre. At times, it is almost exclusively what I listen to  as I go about my day. Having the motion to follow and to stim to — these interactions with klezmer remain an invaluable and cherished asset to my life. 

After college, Weiser stayed musically active. “I was reading a lot of vocal music, and also chamber music,” said Weiser. Then his debut album, which set a number of poems in English and Yiddish, was commissioned by Roulette in 2019 and ended up being a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Following this illustrious debut, Weiser received a commission from ASCAP which would eventually become “in a dark blue night,” which had its live premier back in 2021 before being recorded in 2022 and finally released this year.

Back when New York felt new

“in a dark blue night” is comprised of two sections. The first is the eponymous “in a dark blue night,” a setting of poems in Yiddish. The second is “Coney Island Days,” musical settings of oral accounts from the composer’s late grandmother Irene Weiser. 

“in a dark blue night” centers the writings of Yiddish immigrant poets who settled in New York and particularly poems which describe New York at nighttime. The album’s liner notes include a conversation between Tenement Museum president Annie Polland and Niki Russ Federman, co-owner of the New York Jewish deli staple Russ & Daughters. Polland notes how the album “[brings] into relief the emotional experience of what it would have been like to encounter the city for the first time.” 

The poets included Morris Rosenfeld who immigrated to New York in the 1880s, as well as Anna Margolin, Celia Dropkin, Naftali Gross and Reuben Iceland who all arrived soon after the year 1900. Today, everyone has some broad notion of New York culture, which has become central to our global one over the past century. But the New York these poets arrived in was still coming into itself. 

The poets’ perceptions are conflicted, but all full of wonder. Where Margolin sees noise and tragedy, Gross sees the stars and illumination. Iceland feels the imposing nature of New York’s gigantism while Dropkin describes a sharp contrast, describing an idyllic land of honey created by the labor and similitude of worker bees.

Aside from being in Yiddish, none of the poems actually touch on Jewish themes directly. Maybe this reflected the renegotiation of identity each poet had to engage with. Just as with New York broadly, Jewish New York (which today has many identifiable markers) was, just as well, only coming into itself at the time.

Matching these distinctions, Weiser’s compositions are emotionally nuanced. They follow a tradition of art song, creating unique sonic worlds to pay heed to each poet’s words. “My credo, so to speak, in setting poetry to music, is that I really try to bring the poetry alive in its own terms,” says Weiser. At the same time, the songs are blurry and impressionistic, capturing the terrifying majesty the poets describe and maybe even the uncertainty of our memories today. 

Weiser’s intricate uses of timbre, voicing and countermelody underneath relatively straightforward harmonic modalities reflect this. Just as early New York may have had a clarity in the simple majesty of its illuminated modernist and art deco buildings, each poet (along with Weiser) seemed to know there was much more to it as they were learning to fit into this new city, increasingly at the center of a brave new world.

Snapshots of Coney Island 

In “Coney Island Days,” Weiser leans on accounts from his late grandmother, Irene Weiser as the source material for his songs. Federman notes in the liner notes that “​​there was very often a feeling among the immigrant population that their own stories were not that important. It wasn’t shame, exactly, but the idea that their family history wasn’t interesting.” While the poets give us intricate emotional portraits of New York, Irene Weiser’s stories are straightforward recollections, the gorgeous, honest kind anyone’s grandparent might give of their childhood.

They are descriptions of simple joys, realities and circumstances of the time, especially reflecting trips to the famous amusements at Coney Island. To match, Weiser’s compositions in this section touch on oom-pah flavors and recognizable structures that feel more proletarian and easier to pin down while still remaining in Weiser’s refined compositional style.

New York then, New York now

Reflecting on the album and its place in the evolution of Jewish culture, Weiser returned to Federman’s restaurant Russ & Daughters, who have remained popular by evolving to do modern takes on classic New York Jewish cuisine, as a corollary. 

“I see the work that I'm trying to do as being a similar thing [to Russ & Daughters], but with music. I'm trying to go to the source — this amazing, incredible Yiddish poetry from the turn of the century and these personal stories from my grandmother — but then to package them in this really elegant and very contemporary way.”

Click here to purchase “in a dark blue night” on Bandcamp

A 24-year old bochur, musician Shlomo Gleyzer released his debut album titled “Flying Colors” on January 20.

Music beyond the threshold

Gleyzer is from New York where he was born to a frum family. His parents are originally from the Soviet Union where, as Gleyzer notes, they weren’t able to practice Judaism. He describes having a “very serious, very intense” upbringing in Judaism. 

“From a young age, I always had a passion for music,” said Gleyzer, describing his musical background. While his passion was strong from a young age, the music he had access to was more limited. “Really the only music in my house that I knew was really, really religious Hasidic music,” said Gleyzer. “I didn’t really have much secular music in my life.”

“Music I had included very Orthodox musicians like Avraham Fried and the Miami Boys Choir which blew up recently,” said Gleyzer. “The nigunim, the traditional songs from back in Europe. Throughout my time in yeshiva, they actually don’t allow anything besides the traditional songs.”

Reflecting on the secular influences in his music, Gleyzer notes the popular music he would hear ambiently out in the world. “Obviously, my music is highly influenced by secular music, by American music because I live in this world. I constantly heard things around stores or in shops. The way my mind works right away when I hear something I process all the chords and harmonies,” said Gleyzer.

Refracting the light into “Flying Colors”

“I always had a dream of putting out music, expressing myself giving over these messages to the world,” said Gleyzer. “I never really had an outlet and at a certain point in yeshiva, I felt like dropping it because I was composing songs and I didn’ feel like they were going to go anywhere.”

A fateful meeting with one of Gleyzer’s spiritual mentors would change his course for the better. “He told me that any gift that God gives you that you don't use is a waste. He provided something, he gave us something, a light that's meant to be expressed in this world,” said Gleyzer.

The first track of Gleyzer’s album is a sonic prelude quoting the Bereshit, the Book of Genesis. 

“God's intro to the world was ‘let there be light and there was light.’ So I felt it appropriate that the intro to my first album should be all about that light. That light was hidden, and darkness fell on the earth, but that didn't that light is within each and every one of us and we just have to bring it out. We have to see the light within each other, we have to see the light within ourselves. I think that's the whole message of the album,” said Gleyzer 

The album’s influence from secular pop music is wide ranging. You can hear a number of genres from reggae to hip hop if you listen for them. Even as Gleyzer admittedly isn’t an aficionado of these genres, these genres finding their way to him may well be fateful. One gets a sense that even if his influences are unnamed or unidentifiable, Gleyzer has a sense of the divine shining the light of these gifts and sounds through him as a vessel of song (k’lei zemer).

Frumkeit music to the future

In response to a question from Oyer concerning the frum community’s mixed feelings of reluctance to embrace secular and popular styles, Gleyzer, a musician of a new generation, was confident in his convictions.

“I’m strongly for it. I know, there are people who aren't so supportive of it. But something that I feel very strongly about is that we should constantly evolve with different styles — try and experiment with different things. You should try to stay true to yourself. If that's your style, that's how you should express yourself,” said Gleyzer in response.

“The message I'm trying to get over is one of positivity, for people to look at others in a positive way and see the good in others. Stop judging each other. Everybody's just trying to figure it out. Everybody's trying to live life. Everybody's trying to do the best they can. And if we only were able to work together and appreciate our diversity, we could accomplish so much more.”

Following the release of his freshman album, Gleyzer is excited to find more opportunities to perform and share his message with the world.

Click here to purchase or listen to “Flying Colors”

The theme for the 2023-24 cohort was decided to be “The Sound and Music of Jewish Life“ with 18 scholars participating. Public events are often streamed and can be found on the Center’s website.

The Center’s current director is Prof. Steven Weitzman, a scholar of the Tanakh and Jewish culture. Weitzman discussed the fellowship in an interview with Miri Villerius below.

Interview

MV: To get started, can you give me a brief history of the Katz Center?

SW: The Katz Center actually originated as an independent institution called Dropsie College, which started in 1908. It was a kind of independent college in Jewish Studies. Then, as Jewish studies began to become accepted into universities, it made a decision at a certain point to merge into Penn, so it became a part of the University of Pennsylvania. It kind of repurposed itself as a research center, whose purpose is to advance research in Jewish Studies in all the different disciplines, principally through a fellowship program that brings about 20 scholars every year, to do research on a particular theme within Jewish Studies.

MV: Can you tell me a bit about the aims and the ethos of the fellowship?

SW: Fellowship is born of the year basically has two goals. The first goal is to give scholars the time and space and resources to pursue their own research projects. Lots of faculty spend so much time in teaching committees and different things, they don't have enough time for their own research. So one major goal is just to give them that gift of time. The second is to foster a sense of intellectual community by bringing together scholars who share intellectual interests together so they can gauge each other in conversation and learn from each other and give feedback on each other's work. We meet every week for seminar where one of our fellows presents their research, and they have two hours, which is very rare — to get two hours of time with, you know, all the different specialists in your field. So that's the second major goal.

MV: Tell me about the decision process on focusing on music for this year's cohort.

SW: All our themes originate from proposals that scholars make to the Katz Center from wherever they are in the world. We got a proposal from somebody to do the focus on music, which we've never done before. And usually, when we get a proposal, we get feedback from other scholars in that area. And it was recommended to us that we expanded from just music to sound studies as well. So the focus of the years, both music and sound studies in Jewish Studies. That is basically the process that we that led us to this theme. And we are always looking for something where it feels like it's at the cutting edge of new research. And we quickly learn that there's a lot of exciting research happening instead of just music and a lot of you know, people who combined scholarship with music as performers.

MV: What does the fellowship provide to each of the fellows?

SW: We provide a stipend so they can support their living expenses while they're in Philadelphia. Some come for the whole academic year and some come for a semester. We provide them with a space we give them an office at the Katz Center, which is in Philadelphia, and we have a wonderful, the building that we're located in has a Judaica library in it with a fantastic staff so they could have access that staff and they get access to each other.

They're all in the same building. So a lot of the most valuable party experience that they could have a hallway conversations, you know, the coffee meetings and things like that where they can talk to each other because it's unusual, I think what's unusual about is you don't get a chance you might go to a conference, but you don't get a chance to be a whole year with a group of scholars who are in your subfield Jewish studies. So I think that's really the what makes this experience special for people.

The Amsterdam Klezmer Band (AKB) is approaching 30 years of an illustrious career playing their own unique musical fusion of klezmer, European folk and dance music. The group, which started as a group of buskers in the '90s, have carried on to the present day, touring internationally and recording tons of music along the way.

AKB released their 18th album, "Bomba Pop," in early February, dedicating it to their late accordionist Theo van Tol who passed away in 2023. The album art was designed by mixed-media artist Martin Draax.

Euro-Kleztronica

"Bomba Pop" is a diversion from AKB's normal style. Rather than their typical acoustic dance music, the album is steeped in electronica and made in collaboration with German DJ and producer, dunkelbunt. 

"We already knew dunkelbunt from around 2005 when he did some remixes of our songs which became quite popular on the Balkan-klezmer dance scene," explained Chajes. 

Most of the album's production revolved around a back-and-forth between dunkelbunt and the band. AKB provided a handful of acoustic tracks and then traded notes with the German DJ as he found the most satisfying way to remix each individual tune. dunkelbunt tightened up the tracks for peak electronic danceability while band members made sure they adhered to the music's original vision. 

"I really wrote it to maintain some of the traditional vibes of klezmer bands," Chajes said in reference to the track "Joey's Hora," which he composed. Romanian horas (or zhoks as they are often called) are slow with a particular dragging lilt that fits with the traditional dance of the same name — not the sort of groove which quantizes the easiest. Despite that, Chajes and dunkelbunt found a happy medium giving the track a modern flair while still remaining a traditionally danceable and recognizable hora.

The senses of timbre and textural space are key to dunkelbunt's production. Some tracks like "Choices and Consequences" are dense grooves that make you feel like you're stuck in a pinball machine. Others like "Bomba" feel like a romp in the city plaza, while "On Mala" feels like a healthy mosh at the club.

750 years of Amsterdam

If you go through AKB's discography, every now and then you'll hear Chajes rapping over different tracks. "Years ago, before I even started playing saxophone, I used to be a rapper. This was during my teenage years in the late '80s," Chajes explained. 

The track "Do It In Amsterdam" features Chajes' rapping. As he explained, the track was originally in Dutch.

"I wrote a lot of text first in Dutch and it all just didn't work. Then in a conversation with dunkelbunt, he told me 'Once I made a song and I was singing on it in English. It sounded a bit funny with my German accent, but people were really liking it. So why don't you just try singing in English?'" said Chajes.

The track is an homage to the band's eponymous home city of Amsterdam which will be celebrating its 750th anniversary in 2025. "I wanted to pay tribute to Amsterdam," said Chajes.

Remembering Theo van Tol

Chajes told Oyer some background on their late accordion player Theo van Tol to whom the album is dedicated. While the band started up in the mid '90s, van Tol wouldn't join up until 2001 when the band was in a jam trying to find a permanent accordion player. Amidst shuffling through different players, van Tol had started subbing for some gigs and they found that he was the perfect fit.

"He came to the club and our bassist asked him 'do you want to go through some of the songs?'" recounted Chajes. "Then Theo said 'No don't bother.'" Even without a rehearsal, van Tol seamlessly fit into the band. 

"He was just a virtuoso accordion player who had a lot of knowledge. He studied composition and conducting at the conservatory. He came into the band and was kind of considered 'Professor Klezmer-Balkan.'" said Chajes. Van Tol was also the oldest member of the group, having been born in 1954

"He was an incredibly virtuoso, and very inspiring musician. The compositions he made were really, really inspiring and very fun to play…when he died he was at the age of 69 which of course is quite young, but on the other hand he lived a life," said Chajes. 

Two short tracks "Just a Thought" and "The Journey And The Traveler" are minute-long sonic odes in memory of van Tol.

Click here to purchase "Bomba Pop"

She is a member of The Nightingale Trio, a three-woman vocal group singing music from Eastern Europe and the Balkans as well as Nanilo, a duo singing songs from the Jewish diaspora. She directs Di Bayke Klezmer Band playing Yiddish songs and instrumental music and is a co-organizer of Minnesota's annual Klezmer on Ice music festival. Her organization, Folk Will Save Us seeks to support and enliven local folk culture.

This is just scratching the surface — Larsson has many fingers in many pies enlivening roots culture in the North Star State. 

On top of it all, Larsson's group Red Thread just released its debut album "Immigrantke," (titled for the Yiddish feminine translation of 'immigrant') which bridges the many worlds Larsson straddles. "It was coming out of the things I was already working with. That included Eastern European music, as well as Americana tunes, and Irish tunes, and some Scandinavian fiddle tunes." said Larsson.

As Larsson describes, the album is in one sense a conversation, showing the roots American folk music has in immigrant cultures. 

"This is a really interesting conversation — to ask what contemporary folk music sounds like. I'm actively positioning myself in not just the Folk-with-a-capital-F American folk genre, but I'm more intentionally specifically positioning myself in the traditions and genres of immigrant communities." — Sarah Larsson 

Dreaming from a distance

Since 2020, discussions of existence across a distance have become a hackneyed cliché for many of us. Remote work and Zoom meetings, hangouts over FaceTime or WhatsApp, being a #vanlife or bicoastal man-about-town. So it would seem, technology conquered yearning, superseding the palpable feeling of existing in a miles-wide world of borders.

Larsson's album reminds us that the palpable feeling of being miles away from a loved one persists and is core to humanity's immigrant lineage. “Sailor's Lullaby" is an original tune penned by Larsson. She describes humming the tune into existence as she pondering her long distance relationship sitting by Bde Maka Ska, a lake in Minneapolis.

The song hits your ear like an Americana classic — a genre so often inspired by the comfort or tribulations of a settled life in the States. What Larsson's tune reminds us, however, is that the ties that bind us often exist across oceans and political boundaries. For Larsson, this was her relationship that, for a long time, existed between Brazil and the US.

Ambience and existence

Another original tune on the album is “Tzeitel and the Tailor," so named for the couple from “Fiddler on the Roof." The song depicts a touching scene between two lovers, with sparse acoustic strumming and percussion. The song also shows off the production prowess of Dex Wolfe, a key collaborator who engineered, mixed and produced the album.

Amidst the modal acoustics, Wolfe interspersed refined ambient sounds as well as some klezmer clarinet riffs. Fans of klezmer will be pleased to pick up on a number of tasteful allusions to the klezmer canon throughout the album. Wolfe's sensitive production grounds you in each track's individual world and story.

(Un)familiar tales

Two tracks on the album, “Eyder Ikh Leyg Mikh Shlofn" and “Što Morava Mutna Teče" tell stories in Yiddish and Serbian. As Larsson describes the two stories, one's struck by their relative horror amidst the generally sentimental album. A Jewish seamstress reflects on her lot in life, with wet eyes and fingers bloody from needlework. Two Serbian sisters take a nighttime swim and one of them drowns.

While many listeners may find themselves lost in translation, this actually effectively reflects a common reality of immigrant life. Old World pain is often left behind in attempt to protect future generations paving a new life in a new land with a new language.

Two other tracks on the album come from the Celtic songbook: “She Moved Through the Fair" and “Wild Mountain Thyme." The former Larsson adapted lyrics for, reflecting on the untimely conclusions love often has and the cover of “Wild Mountain Thyme" was not actually planned originally to be part of the album.

It was by chance that Larsson would record the classic folk tune with the spare time at the end of a recording session, but its inclusion ties the album together. Life has trials and tribulations, longing and lost love. Despite this we can always find a new home in new love. We can travel to this new home, and bring it the beauty we found along our often desolate journeys.

Click here to purchase “Immigrantke" on Bandcamp

The keyboardist, Warren Byrd, was surprised that Chevan knew the gospel song “Soon and Very Soon” by Andraé Crouch. Being raised in a Black fundamentalist Protestant church in Hartford, Byrd was no stranger to gospel, but Chevan was a white Jewish guy from western Mass. 

As it turns out, Chevan had a knowledge and appreciation of gospel from playing gigs at Black churches when he lived in Brooklyn. Inspired by the impromptu musical exchange, Chevan suggested he share some of his own spiritual music from his Conservative Jewish upbringing with Byrd.

Byrd was skeptical at first about an interfaith-interracial collaboration. “I was like, hey man — we don’t need to be in the firing line of integration, but then I realized it was just music-making. So we got together and I really liked his pieces,” said Byrd. 

Chevan’s lack of punctuality to the gig would turn out to be serendipitous as it spurred a nearly 30-year-long collaboration — a musical project that would end up being titled “The Afro-Semitic Experience.”

The group’s latest album is titled “Our Feet Began to Pray” and was released on MLK Day of 2024. The album features 14 tracks which eclectically and exquisitely blend well known pieces of African-American and Jewish spiritual music along with a handful of original compositions.

Praying feet and an album deferred

The Afro-Semitic Experience’s album was originally slated to be recorded beginning in March 2020 before being necessarily shelved amidst the COVID pandemic. Baba David Coleman, a founding member of the group and masterful percussionist and pedagogue in West African drumming in particular, passed away in 2021. “It really set us back emotionally and spiritually,” said Chevan in reflection.

Despite it all, the album eventually coalesced. “Our Feet Began to Pray” refers to the idea of bodily prayer through one’s feet. Byrd was reminded of various Bible verses which refer to supplication through the feet. Chevan recalled a famous statement by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Rabbi Heschel stated “I felt my legs were praying” referring to his march with Dr. Martin Luther King through Selma in 1965. 

Chevan had a comparable spiritual moment with his wife on the streets of New Haven during the George Floyd Protests. 

“The police took the entire crowd and forced us onto Route 95 — onto the highway — trying to get everybody out of the city. It completely blocked traffic. But as we were doing it, I realized that we were crossing a bridge. I realized that it was like when they were crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was a hot, hot day and it was the Sabbath,” said Chevan, recalling the powerful moment.

Unity in the Community

Many of the tracks on “Our Feet Began to Pray” like their mashup of “We Shall Overcome” and “Oseh Shalom” center an unabashed call for defiant unity recognizing our similarities rather than differences, and embracing love above all else.

While we live in an age defined so often by polarized skepticism, divisive cynicism and inescapable pessimism, the Afro-Semitic Experience’s music reminds us that rising above it all, while difficult, is transcendent. The Black and Jewish soul and undeniable catchiness in their virtuosic music strike one as sincere and wise rather than a phony after-school special.

Byrd notes that there is indeed much to be cynical about, but the project is a major force keeping him tied to love as a central ideal. “Despite my humanity and despite my tendency to be cantankerous, I always have to take a breath and remember that love comes first,” said Byrd. 

Original tunes like “Unity in the Community,” which the group has played for years, strike one as universal. They hit your ear as timeless canonical classics rather than songs penned by an under-appreciated, Connecticut-based music project.

Shedding Our Color, Loving Each Other

Byrd shared some background on the tune “Shedding Our Color.” The tune had not been released before “Our Feet Began to Pray,” and was penned by Jacob “Jerry” Jackson, an R&B singer and Christian minister from Hartford. Jackson was a marvelous R&B singer who had some regional hits, but never quite broke out.

Jackson presented Byrd with a demo tape of the tune in 2016 as a gift for Byrd and his wife, the Dutch jazz trumpeter Saskia Laroo. Byrd never got the opportunity to ask Jackson what inspired the tune originally, but as a gift it celebrated Byrd and Laroo’s love for each other as an interracial couple.

Along with Byrd who provides vocals for “Shedding Our Color,” the album also features vocals from Laroo, seasoned vocalist Orice Jenkins, as well as Cantor Meredith Greenberg.

Click here to purchase “Our Feet Began to Pray”

“Within 36 hours, we’d completely pivoted and made a decision to come out as Zionist” says Ben Adler of the Australian klezmer band Chutney. 

Chutney’s music video for the song “Kama At Yafa” called for solidarity with Israel following the events of October 7. The video gained substantial popularity, receiving nearly half a million views following a collab post on Instagram alongside StandWithUs, an organization which describes itself as “an international, non-partisan educational organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism.”

Who are Chutney?

Chutney was founded in 2020 by Sydney-based musicians Ben Adler and Paul Khodor. It was during the COVID lockdowns that Khodor finally convinced Adler to start a band together. Adler and Khodor, who play violin and keyboard respectively, soon found a drummer and bassist to join their ranks. They began playing for Sydney’s Jewish community and at local arts festivals.

Adler has described Chutney’s sound as “klezmer fusion,” and it draws musical flavor from several musical areas. Chutney explored klezmer through recordings and fakebooks like “The Compleat Klezmer” by Henry Sapoznik. Adler himself is classically trained and also notes that Chutney tries to make the music their own by adding Latin rhythms or reggae sounds. 

“We take klezmer tunes and we modernize them, with respect, because that’s our heritage,” said Adler. He also noted an upcoming track based on Britney Spears’ song “Toxic,” to make a distinction. “We also take non-Jewish music and we klezmerify it,” said Adler.

“Coming out” with a music video

While Chutney’s music draws on Jewish heritage, the band has felt the need to stray away from a specifically Jewish branding at certain points. In order to get certain gigs, Adler describes Chutney’s assimilative strategy in marketing themselves. “It was very much a non-Jewish marketing campaign,” said Adler. “We got new photos taken that positioned us in a space that was comparable to any other kind of semi-hipster group. World fusion was kind of what we were expressing ourselves as.”

Following the events of October 7, Chutney decided within two days to rebrand, centering their Jewish and Zionist identities. “I think it’s very easy to define. It means [Chutney] supports Israel’s right to exist and defend itself as a Jewish state, which is something we hadn’t done before,” said Adler, explaining Chutney’s Zionist stance. Two months later they released the music video “Kama At Yafa,” covering a song originally released by Israeli pop star Shiri Maimon. 

The music video features statements of solidarity with Israeli from Zionist activist Noa Tishby, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak among others. It also includes dozens of videos featuring different instances of Jewish or Israeli solidarity, communal celebration and music-making.

Adler has stated before that “art which divides is not art: it’s propaganda.” In response to the question of whether the video comes off as tone deaf or divisive in a two-sided conflict where both sides are suffering, Adler disagrees, responding with a metaphor. “When your grandmother dies, you mourn. That same day there must’ve been 1000 grandmothers who died — you didn’t mourn for them,” Adler explains. He goes on, explaining that “Israel is our family, this isn’t just a metaphor — literally I have cousins in tanks.” 

Adler believes most of Chutney’s audience at this point are likely Jewish or Zionist. Most of the negative blowback has been on personal relationships. Adler goes on to describe that the band had no desire to denigrate Palestinians or Arabs with the video. “On the contrary, you may have noticed, it highlights moments of compassion between the IDF and Gazans.”

According to Adler, after October 7 and before they released their Israeli solidarity video, a festival had very briefly considered dropping Chutney. This was not the first instance in Australia of the arts being questioned based on negative opinions of the Israeli government.

The Sydney Festival boycott

In 2022, along with Iraqi musician Nawfel Alfaris, Adler penned an op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald. The article opposed a boycott by 20 or so artists of the Sydney Festival, an annual arts festival. Adler and Alfaris felt this boycott set a dangerous precedent. 

The boycott was promoted by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as one of their “cultural boycotts.” BDS’ website explains their promotion of cultural boycotts because of their belief that “​​Israel overtly uses culture as a form of propaganda to whitewash or justify its regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people.” The Sydney Festival boycott was in reaction to the festival receiving funding from the Israeli embassy. 

In Adler and Alfaris’ view, music’s ability to build bridges was too important. “What is art, after all, if not our best attempt to explore and consolidate our shared humanity?” they wrote. In their view, the specific boycotting of Israel was racist and hypocritical. “What about our own government’s human rights record? Should we boycott ourselves?” they wrote, comparing Israel to Australia. 

Recognizing the divisive political reality of Israel-Palestine, Adler thinks that advocates for Palestine have been more successful than those for Israeli in encouraging empathy, especially among the youth. Ultimately, Adler believes based on experience that the realm of art should be a uniting force. “We were shocked when [Chutney] went to places…which had zero Jews. The hora circle just went off and people naturally took to it and loved it,” said Adler.

Individual statements by members of the Peoples’ Music Network do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the organization as a whole.

In late December, the Peoples’ Music Network (PMN) held two webinars dedicated to a ceasefire and peace in Israel and Palestine. The first webinar, titled “Songs in the Struggle for a Ceasefire and Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine” was held on the evening of December 21 and dedicated to resource sharing. The second, titled “Songs for Peace and Healing in the Middle East” was a song exchange. Links with resources and song lyrics were released along with each talk respectively.

Who are the Peoples’ Music Network?

The Peoples’ Music Network for Songs of Freedom and Struggle, started organizing in 1977 in Connecticut. In the shadow of musical protests of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement, there was a sense of emptiness among musician-activists. The first organizers, including founder Charlie King, met on weekends before reaching out to musicians for their first big protest. 

This culminated in a meetup during the 1977 May Day occupation of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire. The protest was a part of broader anti-nuclear protests in the United States at the time. Among other musicians, noted musician-activist Pete Seeger would be a regular attendee at PMN programming for some time.

Today, the Peoples’ Music Network continues to hold seasonal gatherings and “convergences” which include song swaps and educational workshops. Their website broadly describes their activities as “[sustaining and growing] a diverse community of performing artists, activists, and allies who use music, poetry, and other art forms as catalysts for a just and peaceful world.”

“Ceasefires are negotiated between the warring parties. Calls for a cease-fire include calls that no further harm be done to civilians from Palestine and Israel. This movement aims for all hostages and all illegal prisoners to be returned home safely,” writes the Peoples’ Music Network, elucidating their board’s stance on the conflict.

Ending the violence

Presenter Joanie Calem is a musician and disability awareness activist who serves on the PMN Steering Committee. Calem moved to Israel from the US in the ’70s and lived there for a couple of decades before moving back to the US in the late ’90s. During her time in Israel, Calem worked in Jewish-Arab relations and the anti-occupation movement where she first started getting involved in musical activism. 

Calem for a long time supported a one-state solution, but since October 7 has changed her mind. “We’re two traumatized people and we need some space and we need some reprieve.” said Calem. “These were two people that were thrust together in an abusive arranged marriage.” Calem went on to share a call-and-response song calling for an end to the violence of the current war. (1:07:03)

Keeping up the energy

Presenter Adam Gottlieb is a musician-activist from Chicago where they serve as a cantorial soloist with Tzedek Chicago, one of America’s only anti-zionist synagogues. Gottlieb has been involved in pro-Palestinian protests following October 7, where they’ve been engaged in civil disobedience and other forms of demonstration.

Gottlieb emphasized three angles that music can have in activism: ritual and healing, connecting and sharing, and boosting. On the point of boosting, Gottlieb told Oyer in an interview about the power music can have during protest. “The thing about music is that it sustains us, it doesn’t drain us. If you’re just being expected to yell for five or 10 minutes straight, it can be exhausting,” said Gottlieb

(Video highlighting a demonstration and song Gottlieb participated in at the Israeli consulate in Chicago)

Repurposing musical idioms

Ben Grosscup has served as PMN’s Executive Director since 2013. During the webinar, Grosscup shared a song that he had repurposed for a protest he was invited to sing at. The song was an updated version of the 1931 labor union song “Which Side Are You On?” by Florence Reece. 

Grosscup’s version was made specifically for a protest at University of Massachusetts Amherst. The lyrics criticize the university’s partnership with Raytheon Technologies, a military contractor that has supplied weapons to the Israeli Defence Forces. 

Reflecting on the power of musical activism such as that done by many PMN members, Grosscup emphasized how music can change political discourse. “We have the element in our tradition of using music to communicate political ideas. It changes the way in which a contentious political topic like this gets discussed,” said Grosscup. 

“We’re not going to fight with people over their emotional connection to culture. We’re going to let that be just as it is and bring in this new insurgent element into the already existing culture,” said Grosscup, reflecting on the power of repurposing music for activism. “It can be very productive to work with the cultural idiom people already know and take it somewhere new.” 

Full disclosure: I am a simp for Leonard Bernstein. 

“Candide” was the first long-form piece of music I fell in love with (before any album). I played his music on a youth symphony tour in Eastern Europe. The “Maestro” soundtrack was chalk full of Bernstein pieces that pull at my heartstrings. I cried during the credits simply because they played the Overture to “Candide” in my local movie theater’s enveloping surround sound. 

Given Bernstein’s legacy not just as a conductor and composer, but as an incredible communicator of ideas and advocate for music, it’s hard for a Jewish music journalist to not at the very least have a soft spot for the man and any well-made film about him. 

Despite this, I will try to give a fair review. 

Bernstein the _____

Approaching making a film like “Maestro” has one inherent problem. Bernstein’s life gives us a Ken Burns-amount of material to work with. Which Lenny is the movie supposed to be about?

There could be an entire movie on Bernstein as a Jew from his upbringing and family life to his many compositions on Jewish material to his long relationship with the Israel Philharmonic. Another could tackle the contradiction made famous by journalist Tom Wolfe in his essay “Radical Chic“: Bernstein trying to be both a member of white high-society and a communist sympathizer. A gay-focused Bernstein movie could exist and there’s no doubt a market for an entire movie dramatizing the composition of “West Side Story” along with the documentary that already exists.

“Maestro” in a certain sense accounts for all of this. In short, the movie highlights the toll Bernstein’s omnidimensional professional life and extramarital romantic life took on his marriage and family. Does it succeed in making an inspired dramatization? Probably only if you’re already a Bernstein fan.

The issue is that “Maestro” is a marriage story told in Zeitgeist-y snapshots. His conducting debut and Mahler 2 performance are well-mythologized moments that are highlighted despite having no real connection to his marriage. There are an incredibly brief few seconds emphasizing “zeitgeist-Lenny” where he arrives at the Tanglewood Music Center as they shoehorn in his car radio playing the Bernstein reference in the R.E.M. song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”

If you don’t know who Leonard Bernstein is, the movie might strike you as one of those pretentious art films that only gives you meager scraps of exposition on purpose. If you know Lenny well, you probably excitedly recognized the context of different scenes. “Oh my god, it’s a rehearsal for ‘Candide!’ Oh my god, it’s Lenny’s famous conducting debut!”

How do you get to Carnegie Hollywood?

On the matter of Cooper’s conducting, I don’t think it’s worth critiquing. The mythos surrounding conducting prowess has so much more to do with the conductor as a spiritual leader. Keeping time is not a coveted skill that only an elite few conductors are capable of. In fact, most professional orchestras can keep time and play in tune without a conductor.

The special sauce for those “elite few” has much more to do with commanding an inspirational artistic experience with the ensemble, audience and public. A celebrated conductor like Bernstein is a shaman on the podium, clergyman in rehearsal and prophet in public.

I will also note that unlike “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Maestro” correctly uses the term klezmer. Prior to Zev Feldman’s use of the term in the late ’70s, there was no popular notion of “klezmer music” in Jewish or general society. “Klezmer” referred to a person — a Jewish musician — and it wasn’t used outside of Ashkenazi Jewish circles. 

Mrs. Maisel falsely portrays the general public in a comedy club knowing what “klezmer music” was around 1960. “Maestro” uses the following gorgeous line between two Jewish characters: “my father imagined me a klezmer, playing for kopecks on the street corner.” That’s some in-depth Jewish dramaturgy Cooper probably got from collaborating with Josh Singer on the screenplay. Cooper clearly took the movie’s craft seriously.

Bradley “goys it up”

Ultimately, I think “Maestro” is the Leonard Bernstein movie that Bradley Cooper wanted to make. I think it’s fair to say Jewish cultural critics have viewed the gentile Cooper with suspicion and the news media had its own little “Bradley Cooper Jew-face-gate” tizzy to the point that Bernstein’s children spoke up to validate Cooper’s portrayal.

The Jewish community has bigger fish to fry in fighting antisemitism than Bradley Cooper’s maybe questionable attempt at a hyper-realistic portrayal of a Jewish man. All of the people bemoaning Cooper’s lack of emphasis on Bernstein’s Jewish background should actually count their lucky stars that Cooper didn’t goy up the Bernstein qua Jew movie. The die is cast for a Jewish filmmaker to make the Jewish Bernstein biopic — nobody says there needs to just be one. 

I actually think that Cooper’s obsessiveness in making this movie made an incredibly realistic portrayal despite his goyishness. He captured the enormous differences in Bernstein’s voice as a prim, Harvard-and-Curtis-alum young man versus him as a portly, life-long smoker old man. I fear that if a Jewish actor who was chosen just for a more naturally resemblance to Bernstein had been cast, the portrayal may have been more lazy — too comfortable. 

A Bradley Cooper movie for a Bradley Cooper world

In making “Maestro,” Cooper stayed in his lane for better or worse. What do Bradley Cooper and Leonard Bernstein have in common? They’re all-American icons. What parts of Bernstein’s life are probably the most relatable to Cooper? Dealing with the adverse effects of suffocating artistic stardom on relationships and a personal life. 

In an alternate universe where Bernstein is straight and a gentile, there’s not anything fundamentally changed about Cooper’s movie. Cooper’s focus is narrow and on subverting “zeitgeist-Lenny” with his personal life.

Especially with production blessings from Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, one does have to ask why Cooper took up a good chunk of the Bernstein-movie market share to take this angle rather than others. There’s an unavoidable critique of “Maestro” gay victim-blaming. While his gayness, like his Jewishness, is a visible aspect of the film, “Maestro” doesn’t unpack Bernstein’s gayness at all.

“Maestro” is the blockbuster biopic that Bradley Cooper and American culture wanted. It’s focused on problematizing the well-known “zeitgeist-Lenny.” Bernstein’s gay. Bernstein’s Jewish. I want more movies exactly because “Maestro” ultimately only problematizes Bernstein as a celebrated individual success story and member of an atomic family.

January 7 marked the release of “Hoffman’s Farewell,” Dayan’s debut album which brings to life music from klezmer musician Joseph Hoffman’s recently published collection.

Dayan had been playing with the Israel Klezmer Orchestra in Jerusalem for a few years before his graduate studies. On the recommendation of American klezmer trombonist Rachel Lemisch who Dayan met in the ensemble, he decided to apply to the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) where klezmer revival luminary Hankus Netsky teaches. 

Dayan was accepted and moved to the US during Fall 2022 to begin his master’s. During his studies, Netsky introduced him to “The Hoffman Book,” a recently published book of music from the collection of Ukrainian-born klezmer Joseph Hoffman. 

In 1905, Joseph Hoffman moved from Podolia, Ukraine to Philadelphia. While Hoffman worked as an insurance broker, it didn’t stop him from playing and collecting music. “The Hoffman Book” freshly publishes Hoffman’s collection originally compiled in 1927. 

The book contains melodies Hoffman brought from Poland, original compositions and tunes collected in America. Hoffman would also found a klezmer dynasty that extended down four generations. From Joseph to his son Jacob Hoffman to his granddaughter Elaine Hoffman Watts to his great-granddaughter Susan Watts. Susan Watts is still playing today, a noted trumpet player in the contemporary klezmer scene.

Philadelphia klezmer seemed to guide Dayan all the way to the album’s creation. Rachel Lemisch who recommended NEC and Hankus Netsky who gave Dayan the book are both Philly natives. Watts, another Philly native, also gave Dayan her blessing in creating the album.

While much of the modern klezmer repertoire and discography draws off of recordings from early 20th century musicians in New York like Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein, Dayan noted that many people may not be exposed to klezmer having its own “Philadelphia sound.” 

“That’s really the idea of it — just to make an album based off of this resource, ‘The Hoffman Book,’ and bring forth all of this repertoire that we’ve not really been exposed to as much,” said Dayan.

The album itself contains eight tracks all of which bring to life Hoffman’s source material with tasteful restraint and structural imagination. Dayan notes that the track names were largely of his own conception. He wanted to give each an illustrative title fitting each track’s particular vibe. The release on Bandcamp lists each track’s catalog number in The Hoffman Book.

Given Dayan’s illustrative naming and the often-understated and evocative use of instruments and timbre, one could easily be fooled that “Hoffman’s Farewell” was a feature-length film that Dayan’s album was the soundtrack to.  (Coincidentally, there is a recent movie titled “Farewell, Mr. Haffmann” about a Jewish jeweler in Vichy France)

Dayan’s album was arranged for a band composed of NEC classmates: Dayan on clarinet,  Isaac Dubow on trumpet, Aidan Coleman on trombone, Mattias Kaufmann (also of the klezmer band Mamaliga) on accordion, Roman Barten-Sherman on banjo, Karl Henry on bass and Alex Yoo on drums.

As in any good Jewish drama, Dayan’s album has as many laughs as there are somber moments amidst some good old fashioned chaos. Tracks like “Autumn Song,” “Out There,” and the titular “Hoffman’s Farewell” touch on a more forlorn note while “Out of Nowhere,” and “He’s My Lover Bulgar” add moments of levity. 

The instrumentation reminds us of Joseph Hoffman’s own journey. While Kaufmann’s accordion playig reminds us of the Old World where both klezmer and Hoffman were born, Barten-Sherman’s banjo, while at times giving a tsimbl-like effect, reminds us as well of the New World they arrived in. 

Each track is arranged a bit differently, with instruments playing different roles in different tracks. While this can often make an album incoherent, the clear production keeps the album’s overall character consistent. The arranging choices give the album the aforementioned film-like quality, where each track feels like a different scene within a sonic world that Dayan created.

The final track, aptly titled “Final March,” includes some chaotic, John Zorn-esque interpolations of bass, banjo and drums. Dayan says these were inspired by incidental music from a Polish play “Wielopole/Wielopole” by Tadeusz Kantor. In Kantor’s play, a rabbi played by Kantor’s own wife Maria is singing the Yiddish song “Sha, sha der rebbe geyt.” Similar interpolations come in Kantor’s play to signify the rabbi’s execution by soldiers. 

“I didn’t grow up in this community,” said Dayan. “Being able to put something out there that people might enjoy or care about — that would be my honor.”

Dayan’s album release was followed by a release concert on January 18 at The Boston Synagogue.

Click here to purchase “Hoffman’s Farewell” on Bandcamp

In 2008, Frank London had been frequenting a Bulgarian club which was having a musical moment. The Mehanata Bulgarian Bar in Manhattan’s Lower East Side was at the time home to an undeniable blend of world music. “Balkan-Gypsy-Cumbia club mixes. We would play and then these DJs would blast this dance floor club music,” said London, reflecting on Mehanata’s musical fusion.

Mehanata was an important breeding ground for folk music crossovers. Eugene Hütz of the band Gogol Bordello got his start there. “I was a Ukrainian DJ spinning Gypsy records in a bar in Chinatown — it doesn’t get more New York than that,” Hütz said in a 2006 New York Times interview. Another mainstay of Mehanata at the time, and friend of London’s, was Bulgarian DJ Joro-Boro who had a residency there alongside Hütz. 

In 2008, London tapped Joro-Boro and a bunch of musician friends to make a klezmer dance recording. Over two days, London and friends made a handful of recordings while jamming out over Joro-Boro’s DJing. “But then life just happened and gigs and tours and other commitments. I knew [the recordings] were sitting there, unfinished. It weighed on me that I’d never finished it because I knew it was good,” London said.

Fast forward to 2023, London had been collaborating with Aaron Bendich on curating concerts for the Yiddish New York festival. “Somewhere along the way, I realized I was going to finish this record that became Chronika. I had an intuitive sense that it would make sense to work with [Bendich],” said London. 

While the recordings from Chronika came from a single two-day recording session, the tracks that London and Bendich ended up with are incredibly eclectic. “It doesn’t really fall squarely into any genre category. It’s almost a cop out to just call it klezmer — klezmer being an ill-defined category to begin with,” said Bendich. 

While “Chronika” reflects Mehenata’s already genre-bending club sound, London’s imagination adds even more diversity to an already well-seasoned gumbo of music. The album has Hanukkah songs, Hasidic nigunim, West Indian soca along with influences from Herbie Hancock, electronica, dub and more.

The tracks “TOPZ” and “GREEKZ” put high energy danceable spins on the classic Hanukkah songs “S’vivon” and “Yevonim” respectively. “TOPZ” in particular has an intense clarinet solo from Michael Winograd along with interpolated riffs taken from folklorist Moisei Beregovsky’s collection of klezmer music transcriptions. Both “TOPZ” and “GREEKZ” have accompanying music videos as well.

Bendich and London both point to the track “UNITY” aka “Carnival in Crown Heights” as the album’s centerpiece. The track is both personal and aspirational for London. For nearly 30 years of his career, he’s played gigs in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Crown Heights is home to both large Hasidic Jewish and West Indian communities, both of which London has played amongst. 

The track features West Indian soca music and lyrics written by London set against the “Rosh Kodesh Kislev Nign,” a popular Hasidic melody by Rabbi Feitel Levin who resides in Crown Heights. “I have a dream for Hasids and West Indians to be dancing together, either on Purim or the Labor Day Parade. Put it to this music blasting out of a sound system — that’s my dream,” said London.

Among many sounds to listen for, London’s collaboration and creativity stands out above all as he describes the album. The album is a long-awaited continuation of London’s series of albums with his “Klezmer Brass Allstars” — a motley crew of instrumentalists London has called on for collaboration over the years.

An important collaborator and personal hero of London’s is the late guitarist, Yosi Piamenta z”l. “Truly a legend…he was called the ‘Hasidic Hendrix’ and he changed Hasidic music totally. It was great to have him play on the record,” said London. “Chronika” also features two remix tracks: one of “GREEKZ” by Curha and “TOPZ” by Sam Day Harmet.

The Hanukkah stoner vibe of the album’s name and artwork came as a happy afterthought as London was figuring out how to tie the album together conceptually. “Chronika” and the album’s stylized artwork are a Judaized reference to Dr. Dre’s classic hip-hop album, “The Chronic.” London also notes that the album’s music is incredibly fun to listen to while stoned.

Bendich, who is ever-opinionated on Jewish music, noted his delight at working with London on the album. “It’s been a crazy, amazing pleasure to work on this album, because it’s just absolutely fantastic music,” said Bendich. 

Click here to purchase “Chronika” on Bandcamp