Who Knew Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Son Is Revolutionizing World Music?

Ronald Litke, The Jewish Daily Forward

Jewish roots are emerging in contemporary music from remarkably diverse performers who are often not Jewish. Beyond the intriguing klezmer revival , there’s a steadily growing movement of typically classically trained musicians who are discovering mostly European Jewish music as a base for alchemical combinations of past and present.

When classical guitarist Denis Azabagic, originally from Bosnia, and his wife, flutist Eugenia Moliner, who hails from Spain, visited his family back home in the mid-1990s, Azabagic recalls his great-aunt talking to his wife in Spanish.

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Gad Elbaz just united the City of Jerusalem in the most beautiful way

From israelvideonetwork.com

In a stunning video that includes sweeping footage of the Old City of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas, Israeli superstar Gad Elbaz is the voice of the Jewish people, expressing a longing for the day when Jerusalem will no longer be divided but will be a single united city.

Elbaz is joined by well known Israeli musician Meron Williams and the two walk the streets of the Old City, accompanied in song by Israelis of all ages who are eager to embrace the thriving Jewish communities that have begun to flourish all around the Kotel area.

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Bob Dylan’s forgotten pro-Israel song, revisited

By Gabe Friedman for JTA
“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now,” Bob Dylan sang in 1964’s “My Back Pages.”

Reverse-aging or no, the legendary Jewish folk singer turns 75 on Tuesday.

While Dylan’s Jewishness has been examined and reexamined over the years, relatively little attention has been paid to his 1983 song “Neighborhood Bully” — a rare declaration of full-throated Israel support by a mainstream American rocker.

The lyrics (posted in full here) equate Israel with an “exiled man,” who is unjustly labeled a bully for fending off constant attacks by his neighbors.

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La Dor V’Jazz

Orli Santo for The Jewish Week

Meet members of the three waves of Israeli jazz musicians who have washed ashore here, and made their rhythmic and melodic mark.

THE FIRST WAVE

Bassist Avishai Cohen (avishaicohen.com)

Declared one of the 100 Most Influential Bass Players of the 20th Century by Bass Player Magazine, Cohen, 46, has been hailed by DownBeat as “a jazz visionary of global proportions.” Like several of his contemporaries, his signature sound blends Middle Eastern, Eastern European and African-American musical idioms. The New York Times describes it as a “heavy Middle Eastern groove with a delicate, almost New Age lyricism.”

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Hey, Mister DJ: Put a (Diaspora-Blending, Genre-Bending) Record On

Booty-shaking new music from A-Wa, Sandaraa, and Schizophonia

By Vox Tablet

Rob Weisberg, the host of the world music radio program Transpacific Sound Paradise, joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about a trio of new genre-bending projects: A-Wa, Sandaraa, and Schizophonia. A-Wa are Israeli sisters of Yemeni ancestry who invoke the music of legendary singer Ofra Haza. (The band’s infectious pop songs have made a splash with viral videos like this one.) Sandaraa joins Pashtun songs from Pakistani singer Zeb Bangash with the Eastern European klezmer clarinet of Michael Winograd. And Schizophonia, a project of guitarist Yoshie Fruchter, reconceives cantorial songs by setting them in a rock ’n’ roll context.

Weisberg shares a bit of background about each project, and we listen in for ourselves to these energetic and riveting sounds.

Listen:

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The Israelis Behind Coldplay’s Stunning New Video

By Avishay Artsy for Jewniverse

The video for Coldplay’s “Up&Up” has already garnered 12 million YouTube views this week, and that number just keeps going up and up. And for good reason: it’s simply breathtaking.

Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia co-directed the video for the British rock band. The two 30-year-old Israelis describe the video as “a poignant, surrealist montage which alludes to contemporary issues.”

The video blends seemingly incongruous worlds: whales swimming in the sky, a child swinging in outer space, synchronized swimmers in a teacup and popcorn bursting from a volcano.

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Andalusian Love Song

By Rahel Musleah for Hadassah Magazine   

The raspy strains of the ney, a Persian flute, give way to the swelling percussive rhythm of 35-piece Andalusian Orchestra Ashkelon—and suddenly Israeli singer David Broza’s voice emerges with his beloved hit “Shir Ahava Bedoui,” fused with a popular Arabic melody. The collaboration between Broza and the orchestra that began five years ago with new arrangements by director and conductor Tom Cohen has resulted in a fabulous reworking of Broza’s boy-with-guitar sound.

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The Surprising Yiddishkeit of Nat King Cole

Beth Dwoskin for The Jewish Daily Forward   

In 1947, a magnificent jazz pianist and singer named Nat King Cole recorded a breakthrough number titled “Nature Boy.” In a world of late-era swing, novelty songs, and syrupy ballads, “Nature Boy” stood out because of mysterious, evocative lyrics but also because of its brooding, urgent melody. Few listeners were aware of the Jewish resonances of “Nature Boy,” including perhaps its putative composer, Eden Ahbez.

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Who Should Replace James Levine at the Met?

Benjamin Ivry for The Jewish Daily Forward   

The Metropolitan Opera press release dated April 14 stating that long-time music director James Levine is retiring at age 72 due to health issues — without even a perfunctory quote from the departing maestro himself — has left all opera fans agog at the possibilities of who may be hired for the job. No one can really replace a conductor who has run the ship at the Met continuously since 1976, and it seems unlikely that any musician will be permitted such a lengthy stay at the top again. Opera is an innately hysterical art form, where primal, tantrum-like shrieks are rewarded with ovations. Little if anything about selecting a new Met opera director is likely to be rational. Possible successors to Levine, only of handful of whom have been widely discussed, include Gianandrea Noseda, Andris Nelsons, Simone Young, Kazushi Ono, Richard Farnes, Ivor Bolton, Evelino Pidò, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin; it may be helpful to consider a few generally overlooked alternatives, some of them Jewish.

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EXCLUSIVE: Listen to The Song Allen Ginsberg Wrote For His Father

The Jewish Daily Forward    

Although the voice is definitely familiar, the genre is definitely not. Could that possibly be the late Allen Ginsberg, talk-singing while accompanied by horn and guitar? In fact, it is. In conjunction with the release of the 3 CD box set “The Last Word On First Blues” released by Omnivore Recordings, the Forward presents the premiere of “Father Death Blues,” a song by the beat poet laureate himself.

Listen.

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Ma’agalim - Jane Bordeaux

The video for Tel Aviv-based Jane Bordeaux Band’s pretty, wistful acoustic song “Ma’agalim” has been making the rounds on the Internet, and for good reason—it’s gorgeous.  Enjoy!




 Ma'agalim - Jane Bordeaux from Uri Lotan on Vimeo.

Remembering Phil Ochs, the Other Great Jewish Folksinger of the ’60s

J.J. Goldberg for The Jewish Daily Forward   

It was 40 years ago this weekend, on April 9, 1976, that Phil Ochs was found dead at his sister’s home in Far Rockaway, Queens. He was one of the best-loved of the generation of young singer-songwriters of the 1960s, but he was much more than that. He was the most eloquent, wittiest, most piercing political bard of the era. For many of us he was the Other Great Jewish Folksinger of the 1960s. In many ways he was the truest voice of that generation. He was just 35 when he died by his own hand.

When I posted a note about the anniversary on Facebook last night, having been reminded by my friend Hank Albert — who knows more than most about loss — I was surprised to see how many others remembered just where they were when they heard of his death. For me the moment is as clear as if it were yesterday. I was wiping down tables after lunch in the dining room at Kibbutz Gezer when the news came on Galei Tzahal, Army Radio. I put down my sponge, found a chair in the corner and wept.

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MATISYAHU: A MUSICAL MACCABEE

By Talia Sterman for ThirtyFourStreet Magazine

Born Matthew Paul Miller, Matisyahu rocked the music world as an ultra–orthodox Jew with a passion for reggae and Chassidus alike—he’s essentially a unicorn. But after years under the spotlight as the Jewish claim to fame, a shocking shave and subsequent departure from Orthodox Judaism had fans turn to haters.

Fast forward five years: Matisyahu embarked on a tour across campus Hillels with rapper Nadim Azzam of both Jewish and Palestinian background to promote dialogue and unity through music. Last week, Hillel representatives (and us) sat down with Matisyahu and Nadim for guac and good conversation before their World Cafe Live show.

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The Global History of Ma Nishtana

By Ruth Abusch Magder for MyJewishLearning.com    

Each year, Jewish children around the world learn the Four Questions. After all the image of the small child chanting their way through the Four Questions is one of the most endearing images of the Passover seder. The image is so strong that for many it automatically conjures music and words. This simple piece of the Haggadah liturgy is one the first Jews learn but few of us know about the history of this text and the music that has now become the classic tradition!

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For more Passover news, check out our    page.

For more Passover ideas, check out our Passover Holiday Spotlight Kit

Nostalgia For A Hipper New York

With a black and Jewish heritage and a classical musical pedigree, cellist-singer Marika Hughes mixes it all together.

Sandee Brawarsky, Culture Editor, for The Jewish Week   

City breezes and nightlights infuse a lot of Marika Hughes’ songs, and so does love and its longings. Born of classical musical royalty, she’s an urban poet who writes music and lyrics, plays the cello, sings and fronts a band. Her latest CD, “New York Nostalgia,” is a love song to this city.

“A lot of the songs are about an ‘almost love,’” she says in an interview near Lincoln Center, close to where she studied at Juilliard and visited her “tantes,” or aunts, on Central Park West. The nostalgia is for an earlier New York City, one that was grittier, friendlier and more racially integrated, when many artists and musicians lived on the Upper West Side. Her New York of the 1970s and ’80s was a city “with everything not so precious, a little dirtier in a beautiful way.” During high school, her string quartet would play at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 73rd Street, but as things shifted in the city, the police would chase them away.

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How This Ex-Orthodox Yeshiva Student Became a Star In the Arab Music World

Lior Zaltzman for The Jewish Daily Forward   

Ziv Yehezkel is a man full of contradictions. He is at once a deeply religious Jewish man, but also a zealous lover of Arabic music.

The soloist of Arab Orchestra of Nazareth, the 31 year-old was born in Kiryat Ono, a town in central of Israel, in an area called “Little Baghdad.”

But Yehezkel did not grow up speaking Arabic. “Part of Israeli culture is leaving your former identity behind,” he tells Channel 10 News, for his parents, that meant not teaching their children their mother tongue. They spoke Iraqi at home when they didn’t want the children to understand, he says.

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International Potpourri for Purim

If you want to hear songs beyond Ani Purim and A Wicked, Wicked Man, you've come to the right place. Listen to Purim sounds from Yemen, Greece, Georgia (the country), Italy, Tunis, and more, from the Jewish National and University Library-National Sound Archive

For more Purim news, check out our    page.

When Carole King Made the Earth Move

Jane Eisner for The Jewish Daily Forward   

One of the early scenes in “Carole King: Natural Woman,” a new PBS “American Masters” documentary directed by George Scott, features grainy footage from King’s wedding to Gerry Goffin in August 1959. She’s 17 years old, pregnant, adorned in that unmistakable 1950s way, with puffy hair piled high and lipstick as bright as her smile.

It looks like the small Jewish ceremony took place in a suburban backyard, in the kind of cookie-cutter housing development where an aspiring middle class family would want to live. By then, Carole had changed her name from Klein to King, formed a band and sold a few songs, but she was still unavoidably a child of her conventional times.

“We were all brought up to be cute [and] to marry the nice boy who’s gonna make a lot of money,” she recalls.

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Hassidic Funk Band Zusha on a Mission to Transcend Labels

By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman for Jewish Voice NY

There’s no one label for the deep, spiritual, funky, fun, and eclectic tunes of one of the hottest new Hassidic funk bands, Zusha.

“What are we? What are you?” asks band member and guitarist Zachary Goldschmiedt, 24, over coffee in Jerusalem with this reporter. Sitting with percussionist Elisha Mlotek, 25, and vocalist Shlomo Gaisin, 24, the latter sipping a berry smoothie with a shot of hot pepper, the members of the New York-based band spoke about music, religion, and life.

“The only assumption we make about people is that they are all beautiful and they all have something to teach us. Who are we? We are listeners. We are Jewish,” Goldschmiedt tells JNS.org. “Labels make us uncomfortable.”

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The Israeli Composer Who Writes Indian Muslim Music and Collaborates With Radiohead's Guitarist

Shye Ben-Tzur had been composing Indian devotional music for over a decade before he was a subject in the Paul Thomas Anderson documentary 'Junun.'

Gabe Friedman for Haaretz

JTA - For most musicians working in the underappreciated genre of world music, recording an album with Jonny Greenwood, the guitarist of the famed English rock band Radiohead, would be something of a pipe dream.

And what about having that experience filmed by acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson (“There Will Be Blood,” “The Master,” “Boogie Nights”)? That would be the icing on a very delicious artistic cake.

Israeli composer and singer Shye Ben-Tzur was lucky enough to make this incredible cake — and now he’s eating it, too.

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