The Klezmatics at 40

If you’re anything like me, your life’s most important eras have been defined by music. Growing up in the 1980s, I was that weird adolescent who had no time for the boy bands of the day. What mattered to me was the 1960s British Invasion, and most importantly, The Beatles. But by the time I arrived at college, I was fully committed to my klezmer era, a phase that, as of this writing, has no end in sight. It helps that the music came along with an amazing live music scene, both locally and globally. The first klezmer show I ever saw was at the old Knitting Factory, where I dragged my mom (!) to see the Klezmatics with special guest John Zorn.

I didn’t realize it then, but I got into the music as it was reaching the second peak of the so-called “klezmer revival.” (I have my own rather pedantic issues with the word “revival,” but I’ll spare you for now.) Most folks will point to the early to mid 1970s as its starting point. Before talking about a revival, however, it helps to have a reference point for what came before. According to klezmer clarinetist and historian of klezmer music Joel Rubin, one important example of the “before” comes from New York in the 1920s, which produced both live and recorded klezmer music, especially that of clarinetists Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein. Tarras and Brandwein would then go on to be enormously influential on the revival period, with Tarras even living long enough to play with some of the revival generation.

I got on board at the revival’s “second wave,” in the early 1990s. It was in this period that American bands found crucial support and audiences in Germany and northern Europe. And it is within this dynamic that the band that would become the Klezmatics came together. Indeed, their first album in 1989, Shvaygn iz Toyt (Silence Is Death), grew out of a festival appearance in Germany, where the gig included having recording-studio time at a local radio station.

Shvaygn iz Toyt featured the Les Miserables Brass Band on a number of tracks. Not coincidentally, they were also at that festival gig and shared band members, including Klezmatics trumpeter-composer Frank London—who has recently been public about the very serious health challenges he’s facing, including a bone marrow transplant to fight blood cancer.

Shvaygn iz Toyt was not the first Klezmatics album I heard. In fact, I found it hard to get my hands on it for a long time. (Happily, the Klezmatics’ upcoming 40th-anniversary celebration will include a comprehensive rerelease of the band’s entire catalog.) As London said to me, the band wasn’t quite the Klezmatics yet when they recorded Shvaygn. The two rules they had at that point were not to do songs other bands were doing, and not to do anything “schmaltzy or nostalgic.” Even if their repertoire and style was still in process, the sensibility was firmly in place. The album title alone is iconic, announcing the queerness of the band, their political edge, and their ability to synthesize those things in a unique and Yiddish way. (For those who may be too young to remember, Silence=Death and ACT UP were the vanguard of AIDS activism in the 1980s.)

In honor of the band’s 40th anniversary, and as an excuse to hang out with my beloved friend, I recently interviewed London to get his perspective on some of my (and our) favorite Klezmatics songs.

“Bilvovi”

As London said to me, “Bilvovi,” from the album Shvaygn iz Toyt, is very much not a Klezmatics tune. It’s an arrangement of a Hebrew song London wrote for the New York Jazz Composers Orchestra and adapted for the Les Miserables Brass Band and the Klezmatics. It’s a great, weird, jazz-flavored, un-klezmer song. It’s not technically one of my favorite Klezmatics songs, but I really like how it captures that early moment in the life of the band.

“Fisherlid”

Years before the Klezmatics recorded two albums of Woody Guthrie songs, they established their connection to the Guthrie family with their setting of a Yiddish poem by Guthrie’s mother-in-law, Aliza Greenblatt. Greenblatt was a Yiddish poet of some renown, and published five volumes of poetry, in addition to having her work appear in Yiddish publications around the world.

Theo Bikel recorded “Fisherlid“ all the way back in 1959, but with all due respect, Bikel’s setting is a literal snooze. And somewhat vexingly, the YouTube notes for his recording list the author of the lyrics as “Traditional”! Scandale!

In “Fisherlid,” a lovelorn fisherman goes out to sea and catches nothing but melancholy. (It’s also the song that taught me the Yiddish word for melancholy: more-shkhoyredik.) The Klezmatics’ version of “Fisherlid” on the album Jews with Horns captures the dreamy vibe of the poem without actually putting the listener to sleep. It also gave us one of the most addictive tra-la-la sing-alongs in modern klezmer history.

“Mizmor Shir Lehanef (Reefer Song)”

For a certain kind of person, “Mizmor Shir Lehanef,” which appears on the album Possessed, is the song that will make you want to run out and start studying Yiddish immediately. It was written for the band by friend of this column Michael Wex. Wex is probably the only native speaker of Yiddish to hail originally from Lethbridge, Alberta. Despite being born to a frum Jewish family in the mid-1950s, Wex has a tendency to slip into the argot of 1930s jazz hipsters. Standing at the center of a Venn diagram of 1, he is the only Yiddish speaker who could have written this ode to cannabis, and punning, as he does, on the names of Mezz Mezzrow (clarinetist and weed dealer to Louis Armstrong) and the Magid of Mezritch (one of the first successors to the Baal Shem Tov).

“Zayt Gezunt”

The Well brings the Klezmatics together in a collaboration with one of the most important, most iconic Israeli singer-songwriters ever to pick up a guitar, Chava Alberstein. If you’re not already familiar with Alberstein, imagine a performer bringing together elements of Carole King, Bob Dylan, and perhaps even Dolly Parton, among others. She has been recording since 1967, spanning languages, genres, and audiences in over 60 albums. She personifies Israeli music in a way that is uniquely Israeli and bound up with the history of the state. At the same time, Alberstein was born in Poland in 1946 and didn’t move to Israel until 1951. While Israel has had a deeply uneasy relationship to Yiddish, Alberstein never shunned her Polish Ashkenazi roots. Of her first three records which she released in 1967, one was an album of Yiddish songs, and her first of many. Her identification with Yiddish deepened further when she recorded The Well with the Klezmatics in 1998. The album features Alberstein’s settings of Yiddish poetry with arrangements by the Klezmatics.

I hate the idea of “easy listening,” but The Well is gorgeously accessible, with a luxurious production sound the listener can just sink into. As London said to me, The Well “was our first big experiment” in trying to produce something that sounds like “a modern pop album.” It draws on some of the most beloved, and moving, modern Yiddish poetry, from poets such as Anna Margolin, Itzik Feffer, Zisha Landau, and Binem Heller.

“Zayt Gezunt” (Farewell) is based on the poem by H. Leyvik. London noted that their arrangement interpolated an old klezmer melody within Alberstein’s composition. Subsequent artists’ versions of the song have also adopted this arrangement, making it a new “traditional” arrangement.

“Kats un Moyz” (Rise Up!)

“Kats un Moyz” (Cat and Mouse), off the album Rise Up!, is one of those tunes I would point to as a quintessential Klezmatics klezmer tune. It’s got this meaty klezmer foundation, on top of which jazz and Latin layers meld into something new, exciting, and virtuosic.

London’s Afro-Cuban musical influences are buzzing like a neon sign on this one, and guest artist Steve Sandberg’s piano solo pays homage to the great Eddie Palmieri. It’s a great example of the many ways the band uses guest artists to expand their sound.

“I Ain’t Afraid”

When I think of the time immediately after the Sept.11 attacks, I come back to the response of the artists and musicians in my community. It must have been a Sunday afternoon Klezmer brunch, I’m not sure exactly when, but Tonic, the Lower East Side temple of live music, was full of familiar faces. Lorin Sklamberg, singer and accordionist for the Klezmatics, had brought a song from one of his musical influences, Holly Near.

I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh
I ain’t afraid of your Allah
I ain’t afraid of your Jesus
I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your God

Almost like magic, a new arrangement of Near’s “I Ain’t Afraid” had come together—also appearing on Rise Up!—with new Yiddish verses, and a big group of friends and family singing on stage, and we were hearing it for the first time that afternoon at Tonic. It’s the kind of moment you never forget.

“Mermaid’s Avenue”

Wonder Wheel isn’t just the name of the 100-plus-year-old landmark roller coaster in Coney Island, Brooklyn. It’s also the 2006 album that got the Klezmatics a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album. Why didn’t they win for “Best Klezmer Album”? Well, there’s still no category for klezmer music (boo, hiss) and … Wonder Wheel isn’t a klezmer album.

As London said to me, “It’s not a klezmer record, but it’s clearly a Klezmatics record.” I think that really says it all. This was the record where, he noted, “we realized that we’re not just a klezmer band, but a band with our own identity, even when we’re creating music that’s not klezmer.” The musical identity of each band member shines through, bringing Celtic, American folk, rock, Latin, and other influences into a gorgeous mix that couldn’t be more appropriate for an album inspired by the mixed multitudes of Brooklyn’s boardwalk Riviera.

In 1943, Woody Guthrie and his family moved to 3520 Mermaid Ave. in Coney Island. In “Mermaid’s Avenue” Guthrie celebrates the urban textures of his neighborhood, as well as the delight of city life so close to the water, just two blocks from where the Guthries were living.

Mermaid Avenue that’s the street
Where the lox and bagels meet,
Where the sour meets the sweet;
Where the beer flows to the ocean
Where the wine runs to the sea;
Why they call it Mermaid Avenue
That’s more than I can see.

As much pleasure as he takes from his surroundings, Guthrie is still an observer of power and social class. Mermaid Avenue is “Where the prettiest of the maidulas / Leave their legprints in that sand” but it is also “Where the cops don’t ever sleep …”

London told me that he originally wrote the music for “Mermaid’s Avenue” as a “folk rock ballad, very much in the style of The Band.” But when he brought it to the other members of the Klezmatics, their producer, Danny Blume, made the decision to do the song with an upbeat tempo, with new horn lines written by London, making it, in his words, a “party tune.” As part of the 40th-anniversary celebration, the band will be releasing the original folk rock style demo they made for the song.

“Shnirele Perele”

The Klezmatics understand the power of an anthem. More than a song, it’s a conduit between audience and musician, between music and words, between ideas and feelings. “Ale Brider“ is a top tier anthem and a Klezmatics concert feels incomplete without it. “Shnirele Perele” is another. Though the words are simple, the image is one of deep hope and longing:

Oy, omeyn veomeyn, dos iz vor,
Meshiekh vet kumen hayntiks yor!

Oh, amen and amen, this is the truth,
the Messiah will come this year!

In my talk with London, he mentioned that both he and vocalist Lorin Sklamberg had a love for the British folk rock revival groups Pentangle and Steeleye Span. For them, these groups “represented a way to approach traditional folk music in a contemporary way.”

A live version of “Shnirele Perele” appears on the album Brother Moses Smote the Water that they made with gospel singer Joshua Nelson—yet another indelible collaboration in their catalog. But “Shnirele Perele” had been in their repertoire from the very beginning. When they were searching for material in those early days, they went to the great and now very much missed Adrienne Cooper. Cooper was teaching Yiddish song at the YIVO summer program and it was she who taught them songs which are now so powerfully associated with the band, like “Ale Brider” and “Shnirele Perele.”

“Apikorsim—Heretics”

I’m kind of surprised it took the band until 2016 to record a song called “Apikorsim.” It seems like such an obvious image, one that brings together all the themes and influences that have made the band what it is. It’s also just a great party tune, playfully celebrating the freedom that comes with heresy, while also underlining the fact that heresy, too, requires learning.

The Yiddish lyrics to “Apikorsim” were written by a young Yiddishist named Yuri Vedenyapin, who is a charismatic teacher as well as a performer himself. It’s yet another rich collaboration for the band and speaks to the influence they’ve had on young Yiddishists and the creative power therein.

More Klezmatics: The 40th-anniversary celebration kicks off with a bang on Jan. 8 at New York City’s Sony Hall. Tickets here … This December the band is dropping a first-of-its-kind EP, with unreleased tracks, cover versions by other artists, and a recording by Woody Guthrie himself. Check out the new holiday EP, Woody Guthrie’s Happier Joyous Hanukkah …The story of the Klezmatics, and the klezmer revival overall, is intertwined with the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings. Work has recently begun on a special collection of documents, items, and recordings related to the Klezmatics, to be housed at YIVO. Read more about that and how you can help, here. For more about the Sound Archive itself, sound archivist Eléonore Biezunski will present a lecture called “The YIVO Sound Archive and the Klezmer Revival” on April 24, 2025. This lecture “will tell the story of the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings in relation to the revitalization of klezmer music since the mid-1970s.”

HOLIDAY BONUS: Next time you hear someone complain “there’s just no good Hanukkah music” please direct them to the Klezmatics adaptation of Woody Guthrie’s joyful holiday counting song, “Happy Joyous Hanuka.”

ALSO: I’m proud to shout out my friend, musician-composer-cultural activist Zisl Slepovitch and his latest accomplishment. He has just brought out Musical Treasures from Sofia Magid’s Jewish Collection, Volume 1 with 40 klezmer tunes from Belarus and Ukraine. The package includes sheet music and recordings of “previously unpublished unique klezmer repertoire from Volyn oblast (Ukraine) and Homiel and Mahilyow voblasts (Belarus) as recorded by the eminent Soviet Jewish ethnomusicologist Sofia Magid between 1928–1938.” …. Historian Mark L. Smith will give a talk called “Building and Consoling a Nation: The Yiddish Historians Before and After the Holocaust.” Online, Jan. 12 at 2 p.m. More information here … The new year brings a wealth of learning opportunities. Toronto’s Committee for Yiddish is offering a range of online Yiddish language classes this winter, starting on Jan. 12. More information here … The Yiddish Book Center is offering their 12-week beginner and continuing level Yiddish languages classes, starting in January. More information and registration here … The YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization starts the first week of January. The Winter Program courses “explore connections between Jewish life and the national, political, philosophical, and artistic identities Jews have historically inhabited.” As always, the lineup of classes is sensational and offers distinguished teachers on a range of cutting-edge topics.