Montreal Jewish Music Festival: Eclectic lineup pushes limits of ...

Even to Montreal Jewish Music Festival artistic director Jason Rosenblatt, figuring out what exactly constitutes Jewish music isn?t easy.

?If Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan offered their services to the festival I?d probably let them play whatever they want,? Rosenblatt jokes, referencing three of popular music?s most recognizable members of the tribe.

While scoring one of those living legends would be an obvious coup, their respective styles wouldn?t be mistaken for sounding traditionally Jewish. ?I think (to play the festival) at the very least you have to hearken back to Klezmer or Sephardic melodies,? Rosenblatt acknowledges. ?It could also work if you sing in a traditional Jewish language like Hebrew, Yiddish or Ladino. Or if none of the above, maybe your lyrical subject matter is more Jewish.?

Now in its third year, the festival remains committed to having a diverse lineup rather than a homogeneous one; Rosenblatt looks both at home and abroad for the best acts with Jewish musical roots, whether they?re purists or not.

Of the festival?s six shows ? taking place at various venues around the city from Sunday to Thursday ? the opening night double-bill of Berlin-based satirist Daniel Kahn and party hearty Russians Opa! at La Sala Rossa best reflects the broad spectrum of modern Jewish music the festival wants to capture.

?Kahn is the bad boy of the Yiddish world,? Rosenblatt said. ?He plays politically incorrect songs that resemble a 1930s communist style. He?s controversial and he can be obnoxious, but the older crowds love him, too.?

Opa!, Rosenblatt said, ?has less to do with Jewish music than they have to do with being a crazy and fun band to dance to,? and should appeal to fans of Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello, who are known for incorporating Klezmer, an Eastern European style of music best known for being played at Jewish weddings, into their sound.

?On the one hand, we want traditionalists who play Yiddish music as it was played in the early 1900s, which has a huge value to it,? he said. ?But then we also want people who pay respect to that tradition while injecting their own sensibilities. You?re not going to find an act that every generation embraces, but I think it?s good for a festival to offer variety.?

The artists need not be Jewish either, said Rosenblatt, who founded the festival as Montreal artistic director for KlezKanada, an organization that promotes traditional Jewish arts and culture, in 2010. ?Christian Dawid, who?s playing the festival, is one of the greatest Klezmer clarinetists in the world today and he?s not Jewish,? he said.

Rosenblatt is also a performer, one who skirts with tradition by playing Klezmer with a distorted harmonica. His latest band is ska-influenced septet Jump Babylon, who are playing the festival on Tuesday and who don?t sound particularly Jewish, although Rosenblatt begs to differ.

?I actually find that offbeat feel of ska is really prevalent in? 60s and ?70s Hasidic wedding band music,? he said. ?Jump Babylon played a wedding last night and for the first 45 minutes non-stop it was that ska backbeat.?

Oddly enough, Rosenblatt admits that Jewish music is sometimes perceived as being a handful of wedding standards. As someone whose interest in ?his grandparents? music? wasn?t piqued until his mid-20s, the 39-year-old wants to show that Jewish music is not just the Klezmer music caricature of the Hasid playing a clarinet. ?It?s not clown music and it?s not circus music. It can be serious and it can be fun. It has true artistic merit.?

The Montreal Jewish Music Festival takes place from Sunday to Thursday. For information and to purchase tickets, visit www.montrealjewishmusicfest.com.

? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Montreal+Jewish+Music+Festival+Eclectic+lineup+pushes+limits/7135235/story.html

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