ANY GOOD discussion of contemporary klezmer music is bound to wind up at the Klezmatics. In fact, that there even exists a “contemporary klezmer” genre to discuss is due in large part to the New York City-based band that is at once boundary-pushing pioneer, aficionado and trusted representative of the style brought to the United States by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.
Recognizable by its lively violin-, clarinet- and accordion-driven dance tunes, its melodies that mirror human laughter and crying and its forlorn undertones, klezmer music dates back thousands of years and anchors many Jewish celebrations, which is where the story of the Klezmatics begins.
Formed in 1986, the Klezmatics was originally a party band playing traditional klezmer at weddings, anniversaries and the like. A turning point came when a record label executive advised the members to add personal material reflecting their diverse musical backgrounds and worldviews to the repertoire.
“When we did our first international show in Berlin in 1988, we ended up making our first recording,” says Klezmatics co-founder, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Lorin Sklamberg. “The CEO of the record label encouraged us, now that we had learned the language of the music, to take it and really put ourselves into it.”
The advice was a catalyst. Members began writing original material “that came from our hearts and what we believe,” says Sklamberg. They incorporated jazz, classical, gospel, avant-garde, folk, blues, salsa, Irish music and more into the music.
“It was part of this mandate that the band follows that we would not just impart our worldview but our musical vocabularies as well,” says Sklamberg. “It widens the colors and possibilities for arrangements. The tough thing is that it’s not easy to combine these things in an organic way. That’s something that we experiment with a lot.”
For Sklamberg, who has a background in political activism through music, the commitment to writing from the heart provided something that he wasn’t getting from other musical projects.
“It made it a lot more personal for me to express myself as an artist and a human being,” he says. “All the other types of music that I was doing fell away because they didn’t have as much resonance anymore. They kind of felt empty in a way that this doesn’t.”
Now, more than 25 years in, the Klezmatics is an institution. The band has won numerous awards (including a Grammy), reached No. 1 on Billboard’s world music chart, performed in 20 countries and inspired a wave of contemporary klezmer outfits. Its members have collaborated with a diverse array of artists including Itzhak Perlman, Allan Ginsberg and Arlo Guthrie, and they were asked by Nora Guthrie, daughter of folk icon Woody Guthrie, to write music for some of her father’s lyrics.
The band’s latest release, Live at Town Hall, was funded through Kickstarter, an online, crowd-funding platform that provides fans a way to contribute to creative projects. While Sklamberg had reservations about asking fans to fund the CD—”What does it say about us, as a band that’s been together for 25 years, shilling for money on the Internet?” he wondered—the project was a success and the band raised 104 percent of the funds necessary to produce and promote the CD.
True to the members’ early commitment to each other and the music, the album’s central themes are of the small planet-one people variety and include gospel, R&B, world beat, folk and, of course, plenty of rousing and rollicking klezmer.
Looking down the road, Sklamberg sees a continued merging of styles and traditions and more collaborations, but the specifics are not yet clear.
“We’re still working on what’s next,” says Sklamberg. “We’re sort of in a holding pattern where we get together and see what we come up with. We’ve been together 25 years and we’ve accomplished an enormous amount of work in that time,” he continues, “but we have so much more music to make.”
KLEZMATICS
Wednesday 12/14 at 8pm
Moe’s Alley
Tickets $18 adv/$20 door
