Enjoy authentic klezmer music and check out the exhibitions at the beautiful Dowse Art Museum for their first “Late Lounge” music event for 2012.

The Klezmer Rebs will perform for 90 minutes our own version of  klezmer music, world/folk music born out of the Yiddish/Jewish culture of eastern Europe.  Relax on a bean bag, pull up a chair or get dancing – all galleries, cafe, shop and cash bar open until 9pm.

Now in our 10th year, the Wellington-based Klezmer Rebs ethnic/European world music band have released their latest CD Anarchia Total (on Ode Records) and will be playing from it as well as two previous CDs Just add shmaltz and Live at the 2005 Wellington Folk Festival.

For the Dowse’s Late Lounge show the Rebs klezmer curators will take the audience on a chronological tour through klezmer history beginning with earlier folky forms of eastern European ‘shtetl’ wedding tunes and dances, to Warsaw ghetto and Yiddish partisan anthems, through to klezmer’s fusion with American jazz and swing, the klezmer 1980s revival and up to the modern day world klezmer genres.

So come along and discover it for yourself

Thursday 7pm at the Dowse Art Museum, 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt.  Koha admission.

links:

http://www.dowse.org.nz/en/Events/Events/Late-Lounge-Klezmer-Rebs/

https://www.facebook.com/events/199397923490007/

Hi Rebs fans

Finally after 13 months gestation Anarchia Total is now available to order (for CD click here http://klezmer.co.nz/cd-order/ or to download digital version or individual songs click here http://klezmer.bandcamp.com/album/anarchia-total).  Weighing in at 31 minutes 44 seconds it is just short of a full length CD so, for you, we are selling it for just $15 (plus postage).  At 0.78 cents per second, that is amazing value, nu?  Of course Just add shmaltz at just under 45 minutes is still available for the rock bottom price of $20.

Anarchia Total was recorded live at the Ruby Lounge in Wellington, NZ in November 2010, and features 7 live tracks including traditional klezmer tunes Sher and Yoshke, some unconventional ones like David Kaetz’s country swing klezmer song Blue Klezmer Moon, the Yiddish tango Gedenk, a cover of the rude Russian song (by Leningrad) Zvezda Rok-n-Rolla, the popular crowd pleaser Minnie the Moocher, and of course our own Urs Signer’s political call to arms Anarchia Total whose lyrics you can find here (http://klezmer.co.nz/our-music/ – scroll down below the youtube video of the song).  The new CD also features a few bonus tracks including Yishama-o-Rama ((Radiata edit) which is a remix of our version of Od Yishama/L’khayim Yidelkh by NZ DJ Cut Loose.

Buy now and at no extra cost you’ll receive nothing extra at all!

Hi Rebs South Island folks and soon to be fans!

In our first overseas (ie across Cook Strait) excursion the Klezmer Rebs will bring our unique european and klezmer/ethnic folk music to Nelson on Sunday 22 January 7pm at the Free House, 95 Collingwood St. Nelson. Tickets are $10 at the door. We will be playing two sets of music and feature our new CD Anarchia Total.

The Klezmer Rebs have joined efforts with bands such as The Clean, The Phoenix Foundation, Newtown Rocksteady, Anna Coddington, Amanda Maclean (our fabulous Rebs helicon player!) and others for Hey Kiwi. This is an initiative by the Green Party (approved by Elections NZ) to get young people to enrol to vote (you don’t have to vote Green but it wouldn’t hurt …). 

Go to http://www.heykiwi.org.nz/ and check your enrolment to vote status. If you are enroled or fill out an enrolment form, then you can download a song for free! So enrol already! And you can download for free our newly recorded klezmer tango song Gedenk written by Benzion Wilter and sung by Reb Rose. For free!

If you have heard a Klezmer Rebs song live, or on this web site (click on Our Music tab), and want to own it so you can play on your MP3 player, now you can!

You can now  purchase digital downloads of our albums Live at the Wellington Folk Festival and Just Add Shmaltz from our Bandcamp site.

The cost is $US 0.99 per song or $US 5.00 for the whole CD.

Enjoy!

A great time was had by all when the Rebs played  at the Garden Club for the CD launch of the Wellington World Music Collection. Niko Ne Zna was worth waiting for – they pumped and put on a great show, including coming down into the audience and getting us to dance!

If you want a copy of the CD contact me through this facebook page or via www.klezmer.co.nz

Joe Cederwall of the Overseas Experiment www.myspace.com/overseasexperiment has put together a collection of world music from eight Wellington-based bands.  The tracks feature South Asian Hip Hop from Big Bada Boom, the Balkan/Gypsy beats of Nico Ne Zna, Brazealand, Sam Manzanza and Stonerange with African sounds, and latin artists Jinetero MC and Carlos Navae y Son Clave.  The Klezmer Rebs contributed an original track, Kumt Kumt Khaverim (Come come friends) composed by our clarinetist Urs Signer and with yiddish lyrics by Dave Moskovitz’s dear yiddishe mama Dr Sarah Traister  Moskovitz.

The launch of the nicely designed CD featuring the Rebs and a number of the participating world music bands performing live will be Friday nite 15 July at the Garden Bar in Wellington.

The weather gods held back the rain and the Klezmer Rebs kept the crowd warm with our tuchas-shaking set on the Main stage at the Newtown Festival.  Rebs fan Helga Goran took some fotos of us (above and linked here here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90677&id=1620667385&fbid=1740802332791)

Oy Azoy had the tough spot of opening at 10am, and Josh joined us for a short jam at the end of our set.

Here he is, looking totally like the cool jazzman that he is, slumming it with the Rebs.

I enjoyed comrades in arms Hikoikoi and will be sad to see keyboard player James leaving NZ for a while to set up shop in Berlin, where there is apparently a lively kiwi expat music scene.

DJ Cut Loose did a remix of Od Yishama from the Rebs’ Just add shmaltz CD, which we mentioned in an earlier news item.

She has now done a “radiata” edit remix and it has been included (as track eight) on a Hanukkah album compiled by Tablet Magazine – Another Time, Another Way, which features remixed versions of holiday and Jewish classics.

Check out the Table Magazine article about the album where you can listen to or download it for your listening pleasure.

Or just listen to the tune right here:

Thanks for making us world famous Cut Loose!

Klezmer Rebs on Vimeo.