Whisky Rabbi Meets Jewish Cowboy
Geoff Berner, the brashly Jewish, highly political accordion player with the outrageous wit, has been reeling in and out of my life for the past 10 years. My first memories of Berner are of him...
View ArticleJewish Managers Black Music
Professor Jonathan Karp, Director of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City, spoke at McGill University about the relationship between Jewish entrepreneurs and black performers in the...
View ArticleLong Live Snowblink
On Friday March 25, I saw ex Uncle Tupelo/Wilco frontman Jeff Teedy play at the Olympia Theatre in Montreal. Tweedy played a solo acoustic set, signaling an entrance into a Neil Young phase of his...
View ArticleSleepover with Socalled
Josh Dolgin’s new record, “Sleepover,” is considerably less Jewish than his four previous ones. Thematically, that is. It seems to be for the best, as though Dolgin has truly grown into himself....
View ArticleHigh Twilight: Dylanesque and Beautiful.
What is it in the Jewish psyche that causes us to point and mention with pride that so and so is a member of the tribe? In a culture where doctors and lawyers are the norm, we hold up musicians and...
View ArticleMishMash: East of Odessa
Purim is coming up in a few days and I was reminded of a voyage I took 6 years ago to the newly opened Grande Bibliotheque Nationale in Montreal when the divine hand of God led me to the world music...
View ArticleDeLeon Marries Ladino to Mariachi
Expat communities are some of the most interesting to encounter because they often live as though in a perpetual sway between the old and the new. Take the hot-blooded Moroccans of oft-frigid Montreal...
View ArticleDear Leonard…
Your concerts in Montreal were amazing! Thank you for giving us everything you’ve got. Last Friday- in anticipation of your return home- Shtetl did a live Leonard Cohen tribute show. I was blown...
View ArticleInterview with Idan Raichel & Vieux Farka Toure
For millennia, musicians have traveled through mountains, deserts and oceans, bringing along their instruments, melodies and influences. Two such wandering musicians, Vieux Farka Touré and Idan...
View ArticleRiff Cohen à Paris
So you’ve had enough from the all-you-can-hear music buffet. It’s gone way past indigestion. They sell it as the brand-new-must-listen-to, yet it all sounds like it’s been heard time and time again. As...
View ArticleIsrael, Iraq, Isis & The Music of Dudu Tassa
WARNING: The following article contains references to Israel, Iraq, fingering, tunneling, Egypt and Isis. An open mind is strongly advised. On the day I was called upon to write about this week’s Dudu...
View ArticleJetLAG of Cultures
Osnat Ita Skoblinski, an Israeli residing in Montreal, met Psoy Korolenko a Russian Jewish musician residing all over, and California-born, Scotland-based Jewish ethnographer singer Michael Alpert,...
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