Possessed, by The Klezmatics (official)

Possessed

by The Klezmatics (official)

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1.	Shprayz Ikh Mir 03:04	buy track
2.	Kolomeyke 01:40	buy track
3.	Moroccan Game 02:46	buy track
4.	An Undoing World 03:40	buy track
5.	Mizmor Shir Lehanef (Reefer Song) 05:14	buy track
6.	Shvartz Un Vays 04:54	buy track
7.	Lomir Heybn Dem Bekher 04:19	buy track
8.	Sirba Matey Matey 04:07	buy track
9.	Mipney Ma 01:36	buy track
10.	Beggars' Dance 02:19	buy track
11.	Shnaps-Nign 01:50	buy track
12.	Interlude 00:36	buy track
13.	Dybbuk Shers 03:12	buy track
14.	Fradde's Song 03:04	buy track
15.	Der Shvartser Mi Adir 02:13	buy track
16.	Hinokh Yafo 04:06	buy track
17.	Mipney Ma 01:12	buy track
18.	Eyn Mol 03:23	buy track

about

Much of Possessed is a collaboration with Tony Kushner (the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright of “Angels in America”). He contributes lyrics to two songs, and the second half of the album was designed as a musical score for his play “A Dybbuk: Between Two Worlds” (an adaptation of Jewish folk tales by S. An-ski). The marriage of artistic sensibilities is perfect. The Klezmatics’ ethos is at once deeply traditional and deeply progressive. Their music is a lively engagement with Jewishness itself, inflecting Eastern European klezmer music with other genres so seamlessly that it seems misleading even to name the other influences (classical, Dixieland, bebop, Middle Eastern folk, modern rock…). Their song catalog includes religious traditionals, but it also includes original Hebraic odes to marijuana and homosexuality. All of which is very much in line with Kushner’s endless quest to sort out his own disparate influences as a gay, Jewish, democratic-socialist, Louisiana-born, New York-adopted artiste. The collaboration has afforded the Klezmatics an opportunity to expand their palette. While there is plenty of their familiar frenzied spiritual party music, there is also some gorgeously evocative minor-key mysticism. The titular theme of possession is, on its face, a reference to the ghost story in A Dybbuk, but it’s best explained by Kushner in his smart, funny, gushing liner notes. “Are we not possessed,” he asks, “by the multitudes we contain, not only multitudes of observant and unobservant brave martyred ancestors…but of all the cultures through which we have wandered, which we have helped to shape, in which we were at home and never at home?” That’s a pretty good description of the Klezmatics’ music, which is itself a singularly Jewish assimilation of multitudinous influences. (Darryl Cater, AMG)

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released January 1, 1997

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about

The Klezmatics (official) New York, New York

Since their emergence more than 30 years ago, the Klezmatics have raised the bar for Eastern European Jewish music, made aesthetically, politically and musically interesting recordings, inspired future generations, created a large body of work that is enduring, and helped to change the face of contemporary Yiddish culture. ... more

klezmatics.com

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