By Alexander Gelfand
Singer Basya Schechter is not some naive Jewish singer doing a world music mash-up. Her latest release is a collection of Yiddish songs that showcase her distinctive sound.
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By Alexander Gelfand
It’s easy to laugh at reports of music-banning in China or by fundamentalists groups. But ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbis have also sought to ban music they find distasteful.
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By Alexander Gelfand
Istanbul was once a center of Sephardic Jewish life and music. Little of that grand legacy remains there, but it has spread to America and around the world.
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By Alexander Gelfand
‘A melody lives and dies and it is forgotten,” actor Rafael Goldwaser says early on in a presentation of “
A Gilgl fun a Nign” (“The Metamorphosis of a Melody”). “But a melody can be resurrected.”
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By Alexander Gelfand
A tough room, lousy sound and half a band. Given the poor hand she was dealt, it’s a testament to Alicia Jo Rabins’s onstage appeal that she came across as well as she did at a showcase for emerging Jewish performers presented June 17 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.
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