Hasidic New Wave
Hasidic New Wave is a five-piece American jazz band that mixes elements of klezmer music and traditional hasidic music (including niggunim ) in an experimental form with jazz improvisations , funk and rock music . The group consists of a number of renowned jazz and fusion musicians around the founders Greg Wall ( saxophone , clarinet ) and Frank London ( trumpet ) and makes predominantly, if not exclusively, instrumental music.
The band was mostly active in the avant-garde jazz scene around the New York music club Knitting Factory in the 1990s . At this time, the concept of Radical Jewish Culture around John Zorn emerged in this environment, which wanted to break with Jewish music, which was felt to be too adapted, in the period after the Second World War . The band Hasidic New Wave was part of this movement, which propagated a new self-confidence in Jewish music and, on the one hand, turned against too strong adaptation to the non-Jewish majority society, but on the other hand broke through genre-overlapping music with old traditions. Compared to John Zorn's Masada project (with Dave Douglas , Greg Cohen and Joey Baron ), which also combines elements from avant-garde jazz and klezmer, the music of Hasidic New Wave is much more influenced by the use of guitar and bass.
Band history
The founders of the band, London and Wall, who had attended the New England Conservatory of Music together years earlier , were already established on the klezmer music scene in the mid-1990s . London has been involved in bands like the Klezmatics and the Klezmer Conservatory Band since the 1980s . Wall was also u. a. active in groups such as Klezmerfest and member of the chair for jazz music at Rutgers University . They complemented the band with fusion guitarist David Fiuczynski and bassist Fima Ephron from the Screaming Headless Torsos and drummer Aaron Alexander, who had worked with Satoko Fujii and Burton Greene and played in the Babkas Trio with Briggan Krauss and Brad Shepik . Bassist Kenny Davis originally belonged to the band before he was replaced by Ephron in 1998.
The debut album Jews and the Abstract Truth , with guest contributions by Ben Goldberg , Anthony Coleman and Gary Lucas , was recorded mostly in the course of 1996 in the studio of the Knitting Factory . Supplemented by four live tracks that were recorded at a concert in Cologne in the same year , it was released in 1997, like most of the formation's albums, initially on the record label Knitting Factory Works (later Knitting Factory Records ) affiliated with the Knitting Factory . . It mainly contains rather free interpretations of traditional Jewish songs, supplemented by some original compositions by London and Wall, such as the piece "Welcome to the McDonald's in Dachau", the title of which refers to the controversy at the time about an advertising campaign on the occasion of the opening of a McDonald’s branch in the immediate vicinity Near the Dachau concentration camp , alludes to.
Subsequently, the band toured with their crossover music style in Europe and North America at festivals for alternative and jazz music as well as for Jewish music . The performance at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow in 1998 was documented on a publication by the Polish jazz label Not Two Records .
The album Kabalogy was released in 1999 on the sub-label Jewish Alternative Movement (JAM) of the Knitting Factory , as part of a series of releases with bands and artists of modern, Jewish-influenced music, such as B. the album Zohar - Keter by Uri Caine and Aaron Bensoussan. On Kabalogy you can increasingly hear the five band members' own compositions. The album ends with the song Giuliani über alles , a cover version of the Dead Kennedy's song California über alles ; this version deals critically with the police brutality during the tenure of the then New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani .
In 2001 the band's last album to date was released; it combined music of Jewish and Islamic origin and, with its title From the Belly of Abraham, referred to the common origin of these cultures as Abrahamic religions . The album was the result of a collaboration with the pianist Jamie Saft , the Senegalese djembé player and percussionist Alioune Faye (known from the Winard Harpers albums, among others ) and his compatriots, the percussion group Yakar Rhythms , after the bands had already played at the New York Jazz Festival 2000 performed together.
The band members, all of whom are also involved in other band projects, occasionally performed together in the following years. A new album was announced.
Discography
Albums
- Jews and the Abstract Truth (1997, Knitting Factory Works 192)
- Psycho-Semitic (1998, Knitting Factory Records 203)
- Live in Krakow (1998, Not Two Records), recorded at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow 1998
- Kabalogy (1999, Knitting Factory Records / JAM 239)
- From the Belly of Abraham (2001, Knitting Factory Records 294), in cooperation with Alioune Faye and the Senegalese percussion group Yakar Rhythms
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.jmberlin.de/main/DE/01-Ausstellungen/02-Sonderaustellungen/2011/radical.php
- ^ Record review for the album Jews and the Abstract Truth by Brian Olewnick in the All Music Guide
- ↑ Frank London: The Jew with the Horn Interview with Frank London, conducted by Eyal Hareuveni, published on November 13, 2007 at allaboutjazz.com
- ↑ http://www.laweekly.com/1999-09-16/music/jam-on-it/
- ^ Record review of the album From the Belly of Abraham by John Duffy in the All Music Guide
- ^ Record review of the album From the Belly of Abraham by Bill Milkowski from April 2002, on the website of JazzTimes magazine