Presuntos Implicados El Pan Y La Sal CD

As Well As producing crossover ethnic/world/popular musicworks, he is the Irish composer of the very beautiful ...

Klezmer music evolved from Eastern European and Greek music, improvised largely by travelling Yiddish musicians. In the late 1800's, the sound accompanied Jewish immigrants to America, where it incorporatated jazz and Dixieland stylings into its form, ultimately becoming a festive music where ritual and revelry joined hands. Ska, the "grandfather of reggae" is also a well-traveled music. Birthed in 1960's Jamaica, it moved to England where it mated with punk and finally emigrated to America, where its blues and swing styles originated. Likewise, both ska and Klezmer are filled with tradition. As Django notes, "It always seemed apparent to me that there were a lot of similarities between the musics, particularly in terms of the offbeat feel." On his 1998 Roots and Culture album, Django continued the upbeat mishmash celebration with his talented true friends and family. Members from his class acts Skinnerbox and The Stubborn All-Stars, as well as community cronies from The Toasters, The Slackers, and The New York Ska Jazz Ensemble lay down the traditional ska through which luminaries like Klezmer mandolin/clarinet player Andy Statman and The Klezmatics own violinist Alicia Svigals resonate the sound of ancient and modern-day Jewish music. One track even finds the Baker family - mom, dad, aunt, uncle, brother and a friend - singing the chorus. "One of the first things I can remember, of my whole life, is my grandmother singing Yiddish lullabies to me," Django recalls. "I really wrote this record for my family."Yiddish scholar, songwriter and performer Michael Wex was brought in to help pass kosher poetry to the Yiddish lyrics, textually underscoring Django's symphonic efforts to take the rhythm of Jamaican music and join it with tonalities and harmonics of Klezmer. The result is a lilting and seductive combination of ancestral ditties mixed with a straight-up reggae, traditional and two-tone ska. Covers of "Madness", "Nightboat to Cairo" and the special "Do Nothing" (both sung in Yiddish) carry the shared passion and panache of two rich heritages into an utterly righteous and completely catchy realm ...