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The klezmer revival peaked 1996 to 2001.<\/strong><\/span> Back then Yiddishe Cup was moving CDs faster than tea bags at a cantors’ convention. \u00a0Itzhak Perlman was on TV.\u00a0 He did a PBS show called “In the Fiddler’s House.”\u00a0 That started it all, late 1995.\u00a0 My band drove down to Columbus, Ohio, to catch the live show: Perlman, Statman<\/a>, Brave Old World<\/a>, the Klezmatics<\/a> and the Klezmer Conservatory Band<\/a>.\u00a0 That hall was crowded.<\/p>\n That passed.<\/p>\n The good news is klez didn’t die.\u00a0 It flat-lined into part of the culture.\u00a0 Klez is now like challah and grape juice.\u00a0 There.\u00a0 I don’t have to explain “klezmer” to Yidn<\/em> any more.\u00a0 Just to Amish.<\/p>\n Every major town has a klez band. <\/strong><\/span>Yiddishe Cup is a “territory” band, to use jazz terminology.\u00a0 Nobody messes with The Cup in the Midwest.\u00a0 You go west to Chicago, Maxwell Street<\/a> takes over. \u00a0(We haven’t played Chicago.\u00a0 Maxwell Street has played Cleveland.\u00a0 What’s with that?)<\/p>\n I thought Meshugeneh Mambo, <\/em>the album,<\/em> might make Yiddishe Cup the Next Big Thing.\u00a0 Break out.<\/p>\n However,\u00a0 our target audience for Meshugeneh Mambo<\/em>, <\/em>Jews, didn’t go for the funny songs as much as the straight-ahead instrumental klez.\u00a0 After concerts, CD buyers gravitated toward our first album, the one with all the classic klezmer and Yiddish hits, like “Romania” and “Tumbalalaika.”<\/p>\n “Nudnik the Flying Shisl” (Pest the Flying Saucer)<\/strong><\/span> from Meshugeneh Mambo<\/em>? \u00a0Forget it.<\/p>\n We do an album every few years.<\/span> Our new one, Klezmer Guy<\/em>, is mostly live.\u00a0 My keyboard player wanted to stamp “live” on the cover.\u00a0 So what if it’s live?\u00a0 Picture this: A 75-year-old Jewish man says to his wife, “Gevalt <\/em>(great glory), Hinda, \u00a0Yiddishe Cup’s live album just dropped. Let’s buy two<\/em>.”<\/p>\n We recorded the album in a house \u2014 excuse me, studio<\/em> \u2014 and laid down the live tracks at The Ark<\/a> in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the John S. Knight Convention Center at First Night Akron (Ohio)<\/a>.<\/p>\n We always expect to go platinum.<\/strong><\/span> That’s the thrill of the arts: all that striving and hope.\u00a0 We’ll go tin at least.<\/p>\n At festivals Yiddishe Cup has opened for War, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Los Lobos, \u00a0the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Jon Hendricks.\u00a0 Those guys will open for us next time. The klezmer revival peaked 1996 to 2001. Back then Yiddishe Cup was moving CDs faster than tea bags at a cantors’ convention. \u00a0Itzhak Perlman was on TV.\u00a0 He did a PBS show called “In the Fiddler’s House.”\u00a0 That started it all, late 1995.\u00a0 My band drove down to Columbus, Ohio, to catch the live show: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8726,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions\/8726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n—-<\/span>
\n2 of 2 posts for 7\/29\/09
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