INTERVIEW: Klezmatics are ready to celebrate Hanukkah in Brooklyn
Photo: The Klezmatics will perform Sunday, Dec. 2 at Murmrrr in Brooklyn. Photo courtesy of Adrian Buckmaster / Provided by Cindy Byram PR with permission.
The Klezmatics continue to carry on the traditions of klezmer music, which has roots in Eastern European Jewish communities, by both honoring the past and completely morphing it for the future. They have fun with their unique interpretation of klezmer, and that uniqueness will be on display Sunday, Dec. 2 at their holiday-themed concert entitled Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah — A Celebration.
The 8 p.m. show will take place at Murmrrr in Brooklyn, New York, and audience members should expect selections from the band’s Grammy-winning album Wonder Wheel, which features 12 previously unsung Guthrie lyrics, and the Hanukkah album that gives the concert its name.
The Klezmatics, who have been going strong for three decades, features original members Lorin Sklamberg on lead vocals, accordion, guitar and piano; Frank London on trumpet, keyboards and vocals; and Paul Morrissett on bass, tsimbl and vocals. Joining them are longtime members Matt Darriau on kaval, clarinet, saxophone and vocals; Lisa Gutkin on violin and vocals; and Richie Barshay on percussion. Irish singer Susan McKeown will accompany the band to enliven the Guthrie songbook.
The long résumé for the Klezmatics is impressive. They have collaborated with some prolific musicians, including Itzhak Perlman, and they have worked with a variety of cultural figures, everyone from poet Allen Ginsberg to singer Arlo Guthrie. Neil Sedaka? Him, too.
A Prairie Home Companion and Late Night With David Letterman are also checked off in their book, and who knows what might be next. Klezmer music, a beautiful and versatile art form, continues to live on with interpreters like the Klezmatics.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with London, who plays brass for the band. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can fans expect at the concert in Brooklyn?
The Klezmatics‘ concerts are always a mash-up of languages, Yiddish and English, and of vibes — hardcore party music for dancing, songs for political and social changes for all to sing together, and beautiful songs of love and passion. At the Brooklyn Hanukkah party show at Murmrrr, we will play Woody Guthrie’s Hanukkah songs that we composed new music to and a selection of music from our entire history, including our latest CD, Apikorsim (Heretics). It will be a conscious party, filled with light song and dance.
The Brooklyn concert will also feature our friend, Susan McKeown, as our special guest artist. Susan is one of the world’s greatest Celtic singers. Her voice has been a fixture on NYC’s music scene for years. In the last few years, Susan has been spending more time in Ireland, so this appearance is a rare treat! (Susan is featured on both of the Klezmatics’ Woody Guthrie CDs, Wonder Wheel and Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah).
What do you find inspiring about Woody Guthrie’s words?
Woody’s words – both the ones that everyone knows such as ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ ‘Bound for Glory,’ ‘Tom Joad,’ ‘Drive my Car’ — and these ‘unknown’ lyrics that we set to new music — fall into a few categories: epic ballads with many verses that address social, political and environmental issues, including workers’ and immigrants’ rights; and really simple, playful, fun children’s songs with repetitive and invented words that kids love.
The songs on the Klezmatics‘ Wonder Wheel, which won the Grammy Award for Best World Music recording, tend to be the former while the songs on Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah tend to be the latter.
What is so inspiring is that both approaches are absolutely effective. The kids’ songs like ‘Honeyky Hanuka’ are so silly and fun to sing; the ballads like ‘The Many and the Few’ are inspiring poetry based on biblical themes. Woody wrote words for people to sing along with, and the Klezmatics‘ songs do the same.
When did you first fall in love with klezmer music?
I grew up on Long Island and listened exclusively to rock music with little or no knowledge of any other type of music (klezmer, jazz, classical, opera, Latin music, etc.). When I left Long Island and went to college — Brown University and New England Conservatory — I discovered all of the world’s diverse musical traditions and fell in love with all of them. They all intertwine in my music (witness my Cuban-Yiddish new music opera, Hatuey Memory of Fire, that premiered this year). In Boston, I was a founding member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, one of the first bands reviving klezmer and Yiddish music.
When I left Boston and moved to NYC in 1986, I hooked up with other new New Yorkers who loved Yiddish music and klezmer, and we founded the Klezmatics, a group dedicated to staying close to the tradition while bringing the music into our contemporary lives.
Has there been any hesitation about taking the art form in new directions and breaking some musical boundaries along the way?
Only at the very beginning of the Klezmatics‘ career. When we started in 1986, our goal was to preserve and perform old traditional Yiddish and klezmer music. We expressed our personalities by choosing old Yiddish songs of political change, many old Yiddish socialist anthems and workers’ songs. This lasted for two years until, after our first European performance, a record producer and label encouraged us to incorporate our own musical and personal lives into the Klezmatics‘ music. This led to our second recording, RHYTHM + JEWS, a mash-up of klezmer, Yiddish and contemporary jazz, world music and improvisation. We never looked back.
What’s today’s music industry like — touring, recording, etc. — as compared to your first year as a band? Night and day?
This is a long story. The industry is totally different. Income streams from recordings have dissipated, but the ability to record a music video and get it out into the world in a day or a week is phenomenal. The Klezmatics have been on a roll — we’ve made something like six videos in the last few months: an edited music video for our song ‘Apikorsim’ that we shot in Bucharest; two ‘down home’ Hanukkah songs that we did in our leader singer Lorin Sklamberg’s apartment; and this week a new ‘in office’ video for RELIX magazine‘s website and YouTube channel that will be released this week for Hanukkah (big Grateful Dead shout-out — we love RELIX!), and a live-in-the-woods video at the Brossela Festival in Brussels.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Klezmatics will present Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah — A Celebration, along with Susan McKeown, Sunday, Dec. 2 at Murmrrr in Brooklyn. Click here for more information and tickets.
