Customer Reviews

A Mazeldiker Yid

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I saw this group - Di Naye Kapelye at the 2002 Ashkenaz festival in Toronto, and I have to say, that I was impressed. They are full of energy, and, play some of the most 'authentic' Yiddish and Klezmer music around. The group's founder, Bob Cohen, found most of the material for this album by conducting research throughout Eastern and Central Europe, and it truly paid off. This is a great CD.

If you have ever dreamed of returning to the old Eastern European communities of your great grandfathers and grandmothers, wishing you could go back in time and listen in to the songs of joy, of lament, of preserved identity, while watching the people go about their uniquely Jewish way of life, this CD will take you a step closer. I know because it did this for me.

I was on a trip to Eastern Europe to visit the old sites and to collect and play Jewish and other Eastern European folk music, the music that reaches deep into the soul and plays on the soul strings, if there are soul strings. Never having been to Budapest, I arranged a quick side trip and rendez-voused with an American Jew who had been living there for years and who had been recommended to me as an expert in reviving traditional Jewish music. It was Bob Cohen. What an understatement his description turned out to be.

Now Bob Cohen himself, the mensch, was as down to earth as a cobblestone in a ghetto street. He met me in the heart of the city and walked us both over to a small coffee house at the edge of the still functioning Jewish ghetto, where we chatted over a nash and a trink. Later on he escorted me to two evening peformances at small local coffee house/bars, where young local musicians played Hungarian folk music in a conscientiously authentic way. During the performances he shared his comments and observations and bit by bit revealed his work of travelling around Rumania and Hungary finding and listening to old musicians.

As we were parting, Bob slipped this CD into my hand, gratis, and believe me it was worth every penny. I thanked him geniunely for his time, his insights and the pleasure of his company and I slipped off into the fog to head back to Slovakia.

It wasn't until I got home and played the CD that I had any idea of what a gift he had given me and who Bob Cohen the musician, the fiddler, the researcher and the singer really were. If only I had known while I was still in his presence.

As an amateur collector and player of folk music, I'm, believe me, a picky listener. More often that not, I condemn whole new CD's as a waste of whatever CD's are made of. But this one, I enjoyed every song. The selection of music covers a wide range of moods and styles. The music is very well played and very well presented.

But the highlight, the highlight of the album is the voice of Bob Cohen himself. Bob Cohen live is unassuming, humble, an ordinary day to day physical presence. Bob Cohen the voice is pure, velvet magic. Rich, rolling, full of joy and sorrow at the same time.

If you want to have your dreams come true of travelling in time and standing amidst your forebears, just close your eyes and listen to one, even just one, of Bob Cohen's songs. Your soul will want to join in, singing, dancing, clapping your hands in pure joy that time has disappeared and you are home again.

It happened to me. Oy, bin ich a mazeldiker Yid.