"Opening with a few bars
of "Vayl ikh bin a yidale" this tribute to the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto consists
of songs collected by Gila Flam. KlezRoym manages to take difficult material and to
present it in ways that we will all listen. Sometimes, as on the opening vocal, also by
Yankele Hershkowitz, the words are more spoken than sung: "It is our grief, it is our
problem!...." This magically intense album, including several pages of preface by
Gila Flam, whose collection of songs from the ghetto, Singing for survival: Songs of
the Lodz Gehtto, 1940-45 is the source of this material.
Not since Ghetto Tango a
few years ago have the words of the Ghettos under the Nazi occupation and extermination
been presented as compellingly. Differently from "Ghetto Tango," where the
material was presented as a cabaret, these songs are presented here in ways that try to
make the words and melodies sear, while making the music almost transparent. It is like
listening to master typographers (the point of good typography is to make the words clear
while never distracting the reader with thought of the typography) at their craft, just
working in music. Yet, sometimes, it is the music that conveys the emotion and mood, as in
"Sakharin finf a marek" inspired by children selling sacharin on street corners,
or at the end of "Ikh fur in kletser kant", or as on the "Yankele nel
Ghetto #2," in which the constant clang clang clang of the muted cowbell create a
sense of work work work and of striving to create from exhaustion and endless industrial
labor, music.
Klezroym is one of the few bands that I can imagine
with the range of styles, and the musical skill to tackle such a task. (Another is Brave
Old World. I wish that they, too, would release their Lodz Ghetto material.) In some ways,
this material suits them more than the klezmer music, not so known prior to recent decades
in their native Italy, with which they began performing and recording. At the same time,
grappling with such material is one way in which an ensemble performing new Jewish music
today can assimilate the past, make it part of who the band is and what it does, and face
the future, never to forget. Part of the never forgetting is to read the words of the
songs, to listen. The words are bitter, sad, wise in things that humans should not have to
know. They describe life that is impossible to imagine. But they are not passive songs,
nor are they songs of despair. From "Kalt: A lidl fin lodzer getto 1945", sung
by the exquisitely-voiced Eva Coen:
Cold.
I see closed railroad cars
speeding by all through
the night,
Where did they take you?
This is a such a world....
and then the music takes flight with a song written for a theatre
review in the Ghetto, sounding almost like a Yiddish Pentangle (the British folk-rock
group of the '60s) in "Tsigayner Lid". Before this sinks in, the group is
playing "Vayl ikh bin a yidale," one of the most memorable songs arranged by
Mlotek and Cooper on "Ghetto Tango." Here, however, the band makes the song
their own and finds a different way to make the song powerful, and their own. Finally,
having built up the tension, the two singers begin to work back and forth together on
"Papirosn" and Ver klapt du azoy shpet bay nakht". Finally, the sad theatre
song: "Nit kayn rozhinkes in nit hayin mandlen":
No raisins and no almonds,
your father has not gone
out trading
lu, lu, lu, my son,
lu, lu, lu my son.
Some bands have chosen to mix klezmer melodies with
whatever, turned klezmer into something like a musical spice. Others have focused on the
'78s and an imagined or researched Eastern Europe of yore, playing klezmer as it was, or
it might have been. Other than their name, this album has everything to do with Jewish
folk tradition and continuity, and very little to do with klezmer, per se. Klezroym make
it clear here, more than ever before, that they are creating new Jewish music, and doing
it with sublety and skill that put them in the first rank of the best of new Jewish music
bands. In that sense, the band is also according this material the highest honor--carrying
the words forward to be heard by new generations, lest they never forget, and lest that
part of whatever Jewish means in our generation, or the next, be lost. This is an album
that will be hard to find in the United States. The band is Italian. Liner notes are in
Italian and English. The music is universal, sweet, and haunting. Make the effort. You
will be richly rewarded."
Ari Davidow - KlezmerShack
"I posted this to the main KlezmerShack page
last week, but it's still an exciting album that people should know about, even after it
disappears "below the fold" on the KlezmerShack. Here's to a first listening
(and second and third) to "Sceni," by Italy's "Klezroym," a band about
whom I got very excited when their first release came out a few years ago. This second
release, based on a quick first hearing, continued that Klezmer/Jewish-music based
improvisational framework that caused the first album to stand out. Here, I think that
they've gotten tighter. They also continue to feature the exquisite voice of Eva Coen.
Despite some annoyingly bland English lyrics to something called "Klezmer Song,"
the band, and especially her voice take off on the rest of the recording. I draw special
attention to a very well-done eastern-sounding "Morenica." Clearly influenced by
the current high standard set by Israel's "Natural Gathering," (Ha
Breira-Ha'tiv'it), KlezRoym still make it their own." [GRADE: A]
Ari Davidow - KlezmerShack
"This is a lesson that I find myself learning
over and over again: Never, ever underestimate humanity's ability to reconfigure venerable
art forms into new, often strange objects. Just when I thought I had klezmer pretty much
pegged as a musical form, I get this CD in the mail.
KlezRoym is a band out of Italy who combine the fervor and stylings of klezmer with the
improvisation of Gypsy jazz and the feel of Mediterranean music. Sure, all klezmer, being
the hybrid genre that it is, has a little Gypsy, a little jazz, and maybe a little
Mediterranean harmony. But KlezRoym, a seven-person unit
consisting of Gabriele Coen, Andrea Pandolfo, Pasquale Laino, Riccardo Manzi, Marco
Camboni, Leonardo Cesari, and Eva Coen, add their own mixture of moxy, imagination, and
excellent improvisational skills to the music. The absence of any fiddles or clarinets and
the emphasis on saxophones, bouzoukis, and
trumpets give the music of KlezRoym a distinctly forthright, sultry sound.
From the beginning track, "Trokar Kazal, Trokar Mazal (Change Country, Change
Fate)," a Latin-flavored song about an Spanish exile pining for his homeland, we know
we're in for a treat. Eva Coen's singing is simultaneously sensual and mournful, which is
echoed in the plaintive saxophones and trumpet of Gabriele Coen, Pasquale Laino, and
Andrea Pandolfo. The song meanders into an extended instrumental, the arrangement of which
easily recalls some of the 3 Mustaphas 3's best work.
This is just the beginning -- literally. From here, KlezRoym prove how little they can sit
still, moving from the ska-flavored klezmer of "To East," which ends with a
wonderfully discordant guitar solo, to the melancholy Italian love song "Canzone
Dell'Amour Perduto (Song of Lost Love)," written by Fabrizio De Andrč, then
onto the Jewish-Hungarian hora "Szol A Kakas Mar (And the Cock Crow)."
Interspersed between many of these tracks are snippets of "Radio
Freylach"'s. A "freylach" (meaning "joy" in Yiddish) is a
standard melody form in klezmer, like the czardas in Hungarian music and the jig in the
music from the Isles. The half-minute freylachs that KlezRoym uses here to introduce their
tracks are all
traditional tunes, which they've recorded in mono, giving them an "old-time
radio" sound.
Guitarist and bouzouki player, Riccardo Manzi, gets to stretch his vocal chords in
"Arum Dem Fayer (Around the Campfire)." Its haunting melody runs counter to the
gaiety of the lyrics about the Gypsy life of song and dance. This ends abruptly to the
klezmer and jazz hybrid sounds of the title track "Sceni, Sceni."
Rather than just the almost standard sounds of Gypsy jazz that is often found within
klezmer, one can also hear some strains of the cool jazz that was pioneered by Miles Davis
back in the late '50's.
KlezRoym fills the rest of the CD with just as various a selection of music from the
dirge-like "Nostalgia," which is immediately lightened up by the up-beat jazz
improv of "Regalo Di Nozze," to "Klezmer Song," KlezRoym's own
celebration of klezmer music, and the foreboding Sephardic folk song,
"Morenica." The CD
"officially" ends with the lullaby "Oyfn Pripetshik (At The
Fireplace)," a popular children's song which prisoners of the death camps of Europe
would often sing to each other and thus has become a symbol of the Shoah.
Rather strangely, there are two bonus tracks, old-style house versions of
"Morenica" and "Oyfn Pripetshek." They're a bit of a shock after the
traditional sounds of the previous tracks, but they are a transition back to more modern
sounds.
There really is no way any self-respecting klezmer or Gypsy jazz lover would want to miss
this CD. Actually, anyone with a passing interest in traditional European music will find
plenty to enjoy on this CD."
Brendan Foreman - Greenmanreview
"The klezmer revival continues unabated throughout the
world, and this Italian entry into the scene is a notable one.. Singer Eva Coen leads the
songs with a natural, open style, the reed/horn section is tight, with arrangements that
defy categories, and the strings (violin, guitar, bouzouki) lend a dry authenticity,
augmented by an often
funk-driven electric bass. Leonard Cesari is superb in his use of both traditional
percussion and kit drum. A clear, winning example of the band's ability to do it all at
once is 'Danza Immobile', a moody soundtrack piece that reaches deep into the tradition
and comes out far removed from it, punched up by a distant sounding flugelhorn and a
contemporary rock groove. They play old freylachs with verve, traditional slow dances with
grace and energized originals with passion"
Cliff Furnald - RootsWorld
Here are three interesting "elsewheres"
from Italy that have arrived recently. Well, two arrived recently, one has been sitting
here, on the changer more often than off, for far too long. Klezroym's
debut CD, an eponymous CD from 1998, is wonderful, almost psychedelic klez at times. At
its best, it reminds me of the Shirim/Naftule's Dream album, with a near-perfect mix of
traditional klezmer and the rest of the musician's rivers, now fused into something new
and expressive of our time. The opening New York/Sirba slowly reveals a psychedelic doina,
seguing into a folky introduction to singer, Eva Coen (whose voice adds considerable
credibility to the already interesting musical mix) and then the band takes off in a
langorous speed klez/scat sirba. The album only gets better from there, with a gentle
first waltz and more traditional (and untraditional!) klezmer fare. And then there is the
Jewish music that doesn't happen to be klezmer, Sephardic songs such as "Fel
Shara", or the wonderful improv of "Al-Andalus" to the Spanish guitary
"Eléna Tantz." This is one of the first bands to do a cover of the Klezmatics
version of "Shnirele Perele," and while the band would suffer from the
comparison, the wonderful six minute improv is quite a good, and appropriate, album closer
on its own merits. (Actually, there is a surprise remix at the very, very end of the
album, but this is the official end. That's an encore.) This is the sort of album I expect
to be pulling off the shelf 20 years from now, just as tonight I listened to my favorite
Pentangle disk.
Ari Davidow - KlezmerShack
"KlezRoym's music is beautiful, earthy, lively and at times amusing, with noteworthy
Arabic influences, highly rhythmic"
Laura Putti - La Repubblica
"These dances with a gypsy flavour, invented by gypsies and
genial wanderers, live once more in the intriguing KlezRoym atmospheres veined with jazz,
without making you feel the weight of centuries "
Giuseppe Videtti - TrovaRoma, La Repubblica
"In the heart of the rhythmic ravine you suddenly feel a melody as soft as caress: a
result of the influences from the Sephardites, the Arabic areas of Spain, from North
Africa. And when to the group is added Massimo Coen, and his violin flies like a Chagall
character, the tremendous power of this music becomes explicit".
Sandro Cappelletto - La Stampa
"Islamic influences, jazz arrangements, gypsy vibrations,
jerky Balcanic movements, minimalist approaches: with KlezRoym the strong remote Hebrew
matrix is strongly felt and breathes in a world which is looking for new identities and
greater bewilderment"
Pinotto Fava - RaiTre
"Sounds like an ancient underground vocation, whether the voice or the musical
instrument, of the heart's memory. Sounds of words which caress the Mediterranean waves
with talk of mothers, lands, birth, deat, silence, life-beats. Eternal".
Simona Marchini
"The first notes of the first CD of this Klezmer formation are so destructive that
the listener remains attached to the sounds as if in a dream".
Giuseppe Videtti - Musica di Repubblica
"The musical debut of one of the most important klezmer formations hovering between
destructiveness and unstoppable joy, this piece of work alternates instrumental tracks
with songs in Yiddish and Spanish-Hebrew"
Segno nel Mondo 7
" A route of intense instrumental energy in which there are strong feelings of the
community (Shabat Day), dances of urban possession (Doina, Freylekhs), solemn rites
(Cerimonia Nuziale) and effective original tracks. The ethnic groove reveals harmony, a
happy interchange to shoo rhythmic demons and chromatic fantasies."
L.P. - Mucchio Selvaggio
|
