Klezfest could change your life - The Jewish Chronicle

It’s the time of year when klezmer musicians from all over the world start making their travel plans - because the Jewish Music Institute’s week long Klezfest summer school at SOAS in London has become an unmissable event, somewhere to learn, jam, dance and schmooze with fellow musicians.

This year’s faculty includes big names in the klezmer world, including accordionist Alan Bern and clarinettist Susi Evans. From Canada, comes Josh Dolgin, another accordion player, best know as Socalled.

“I'm so excited to be back in London at a Klezfest,” he says, “I haven't been to one in about 10 years, when I used to be a fairly regular participant. I have fond memories of Geraldine Auerbach and her amazing team, of Oy Va Voi and Sophie Solomon kicking tuchus, of the whole SOAS scene, of delicious Algerian garlic sauce with little meat pies... “

He says that attending a similar festival in Canada, as a hip hop producer looking for sounds to sample “led to my lifelong fascination with and dedication to my Eastern European Yiddish heritage.... I never in a million years thought I would become dedicated to preserving and presenting "traditional" Yiddish music.

“A festival like Klezfest has the potential to open people's minds to a lost heritage, to bringing people in touch with the riches of their own culture in a world that has a very short attention span indeed. It brings people of different generations together, from different places, to share and celebrate Yiddish culture, which doesn't get celebrated or even mentioned very much in the modern Jewish "mainstream" of synagogue attendance, Israel-focused discussion, and secular Jewish life.

“It fosters a deeper understanding of who we are as Jews, where we came from, the evolution of our values and narratives... all while having an active, participatory bash of a good time.

Dolgin, 41 studied classical piano as a child “until my mother finally let me learn some jazz and improvised music. Then I started getting involved in "world music" as a teenager, playing the keyboard and accordion in salsa, funk, gospel bands around Ottawa, where I grew up.” He turned to rap music at High school and started to produce his own sample-based music, “music created out of snippets of old recordings that are mixed and matched to create new sounds.”

This led to a fascination with vinyl record collecting , particularly ‘Jewish’ sounds: Yiddish theatre, Hassidic melodies, songs from the synagogue (cantorial music) and Klezmer (Eastern European Jewish instrumental dance music. “As a kid growing up as an assimilated Jews in Quebec, Canada, I never heard any of these sounds or even the language of Yiddish that my grandparents, from Ukraine, Czech Republic, Romania etc, had stopped speaking in Canada.

“So I got into sampling these records from my own culture and that gave me a real voice and a unique spin on this modern computer way of making music that has effectively become all music being made now. I started experimenting with adding instruments and singers to the beats, taking them out of the strict Hip Hop environment, and started making connections.

He worked with Klezmer clarinettist David Krakauer to create a Klezmer techno hybrid that toured the world. Since then he’s made more than ten records, and three musicals, the latest of which was performed in Vienna. “They explore to varying degrees my relationship with Yiddish music and the sources of that music, trying to make modern, poppy songs that have echoes of the past baked right in. Samplers, drum machines, computers, violins, singers, trombones, rappers, everything mixed up together, old melodies, new melodies, new rhythms, old beats... it's an adventure. Now I'm just releasing a record of me singing Yiddish song with a German string quartet, the Kaiser Quartett from Hamburg, working on a record of the music of Kurt Weill, writing the 3rd part of my Season The Musical series and starting work on the next Socalled record.”

For details of Klezfest http://www.jmi.org.uk

Find out more about Socalled