Daniel Kahn

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Daniel Kahn in Luxembourg, 2013.

Daniel Kahn (born September 11, 1978 in Detroit , Michigan , United States ) is an American musician, actor and theater director. He has lived in Berlin since 2005 .

Live and act

Kahn was born into a Jewish-American family in Detroit. He studied acting, directing, and poetry at the University of Michigan . He has received the university's own Hopwood Award several times for his lyrical texts ; with Daylight Savings a volume of his poetry was published. In 2001 he moved to New Orleans , where he was active as a musician and theater director. Among other things, he composed the music for a performance of Bertolt Brecht's Mann ist Mann . In 2003 he released his first music album, River Mouth . After a stay in New York , he moved to Berlin in 2005, where he has lived since then. There he initially joined Rotfront , but soon founded his own band, The Painted Bird , named after the famous and controversial novel The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński . With her he recorded five albums since 2005.

He works closely with the Maxim Gorki Theater , for which he wrote a play (Dschingis Cohn) and composed the music for several. He also appears there as an actor. In 2016 he co-founded the Shtetl Neukölln festival in the Werkstatt der Kulturen . He is also a co-founder of the Klezmer Bund, a loose association of Jewish musicians.

His first four albums released by Earthwork Music are more likely to be assigned to the genres of folk and singer-songwriter . The music that emerged after he moved to Germany, especially the albums by his band The Painted Bird, is an eclectic mix of klezmer , punk , folk and singer-songwriter. Kahn himself describes it as "Verfremdungsklezmer". Some of the song texts are written by Kahn, but many are adaptations of poems and songs by Jewish authors (e.g. Mordechaj Gebirtig ), often with socio-political themes. Kahn also sings songs by Franz Josef Degenhardt (Die alten Lieder) , Heinrich Heine (Die alten böse Lieder) , Bertolt Brecht (Jewish whore Marie Sanders and Denn wovon der Mensch?) And Kurt Tucholsky (roses strewn on the path) as well as a Yiddish -Version of the classic Lili Marleen . In 2016 he translated Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah into Yiddish, which he has occasionally sung at concerts since then. In 2019, a joint album with Vanya Zhuk was released, on which Kahn sings versions of songs by Bulat Okudschawa (Bulat Blues) that have been re-written in English .

Kahn sings in English , Yiddish , German and Russian , often mixing several languages ​​in one song. His texts are emphatically political and socially critical. He plays guitar, piano, accordion, harmonica, glockenspiel and ukulele. His artistic role models include the protagonists of the Klezmer revival Michael Alpert and Adrienne Cooper as well as Bertolt Brecht.

In 2009 a text by Kahn appeared in the anthology Dissonant Memories - Fragmented Present: Exchanging Young Discourses between Israel and Germany .

In 2011 the album Lost Causes by Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird was awarded the annual German Record Critics' Prize.

Kahn only learned Yiddish after his arrival in Berlin. Despite his intensive preoccupation with Jewish culture, he is not religious.

In 2020 he appeared in a supporting role as singer ( Badchan ) at a Jewish wedding in the Netflix miniseries Unorthodox .

Discographic notes

  • River Mouth (as Dan Kahn; 2003, Earthwork Music)
  • Pegboard Blues (as Dan Kahn; 2004, Earthwork Music)
  • Pireus (as Dan Kahn; 2005, Earthwork Music)
  • Uprooted Oak (2005, Earthwork Music)
  • The Sub-National : The First Sub-Nationalist (with Psoy Korolenko , Oy Division; 2008, Auris Media)
  • Bulat Blues (with Vanya Zhuk; 2019, Oriente Musik )

With The Disorientalists

  • Who Was Essad Bey? (2016, Oriente Musik)

With The Painted Bird

  • The Broken Tongue (2006, Chamsa Records / Earthwork Music; 2009, Oriente Music)
  • Partisans & Parasites (2009, Oriente Musik)
  • Lost Causes (2011, Oriente Musik)
  • Bad Old Songs (2013, Oriente Musik)
  • The Butcher's Share (2017, Oriente Musik)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bio on The Painted Bird website. Accessed July 31, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Kahn biography on Earthwork Music's website, accessed July 31, 2019.
  3. ↑ A pretty Meydl is waiting in old Berlin. taz.de , January 26, 2013, accessed on July 31, 2019 .
  4. ^ Message on the Earthwork Music website, accessed July 31, 2019.
  5. ↑ At Daniel Kahn, Klezmer meets folk and punk. t-online , December 9, 2017, accessed July 31, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Andreas Müller: Klezmer-Punk Daniel Kahn: "There is a lack of humor in today's world". Deutschlandfunk Kultur , January 19, 2018, accessed on July 31, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Dissonant Memories - Fragmented Present at De Gruyter , accessed on July 31, 2019.
  8. ↑ Acknowledgment of Lost Causes , accessed July 31, 2019.
  9. ↑ a b Gunda Bartels: Portrait of the musician Daniel Kahn. Tagesspiegel , December 11, 2017, accessed on July 31, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Daniel Kahn merges Klezmer and Rock. Westdeutsche Zeitung , January 19, 2011, accessed on July 31, 2019 .
  11. ^ Daniel Kahn presents “Yiddish Blues in Berlin”. Mame-Loshn, April 29, 2020, accessed on June 1, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Kahn, Daniel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musician, actor, director
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1978
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit , Michigan