The Klezmatics with Joshua Nelson
The Office of Jewish Affairs is proud to present THE KLEZMATICS in concert with renowned gospel singer JOSHUA NELSON, performing songs of freedom and social justice from the African American and Jewish traditions.
Echoing the Passover theme of liberation from slavery into freedom, these songs speak to the parallel struggles of Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt and Black slaves in the U.S.
The collaboration between these outstanding musicians "breathes new life into songs from both the Jewish and African American heritage... a dialogue between cultures and musical styles." Their latest CD, “Brother Moses Smote the Water” was recorded live at a festival in Berlin, Germany
THE KLEZMATICS are the premiere Jewish band in the U.S. (and perhaps the entire world), known for their reinterpretation of traditional Jewish melodies and musical experimentation. They have been at the forefront of the klezmer revival of the past two decades.
(Klezmer is the traditional music of Jewish celebrations in Eastern Europe, the music which inspired American jazz musicians such as Benny Goodman in the early decades of the Twentieth Century.)
Their seven CD’s and international tours have been widely acclaimed. They recently performed with Arlo Guthrie at Carnegie Hall; and their U.S. and European performances are routinely sold out.
JOSHUA NELSON is a widely-acclaimed gospel singer and an African American Jew who traces his heritage back to the ancient Second Temple of Jerusalem. He descends from a long line of Black Jews, their very existence calling into question the dichotomous black/white thinking typically placed on religion, race, and culture in America. “My great, great grandmother practiced a primitive form of Judaism similar to the Jewish Ethiopians and the Lembas of Southern Africa,” Nelson explains.
His first encounter with gospel music was from his grandmother’s Mahalia Jackson recordings, which he first heard when he was eight. “I make Jewish music and give it a soul sound,” he says. “They call it the gospel sound. But technically it is soul Jewish music. If you can be Black and put soul in Christian music, you can be Black and put soul in Jewish music!”
“Soul comes out of a bad experience and being able to sing about it,” Nelson continues. “You can hear soul in Jewish cantorial chanting; the wailing you hear in a synagogue. That is also identified as soul, because it’s what one moans and groans about a horrible experience. Black people and European Jews have both gone through hell in the last two centuries.” Nelson’s soulful music is a way to escape and heal from that hellish history.
