Feature: Klezmer’s DIY Revival Looks Back to Move Forward
By Jael Goldfine, published in Bandcamp Daily
“Brivele, a Seattle-based trio, will be catnip for leftist Millennial Jews. They have a similar political bent to Tsibele, but offer a punky, distinctly American take on klezmer protest music.
“FTP in Der Gasn,” off their 2018 album A Little Letter, sees them translate Kimya Dawson’s anti-Iraq War song “Loose Lips” into Yiddish, and stitch it together with two different arrangements of the Yiddish anti-police anthem “Daloy Polizei [Down with the Police].” “Hungry Yid” is a bluegrass-Yiddish rendition of Bruce Springstein’s “Hungry Heart.” Their three-woman a cappella rendition of “Oy Zionists,” a 1930s Yiddish song with lyrics like “Oh you foolish little Zionists/ You want to take us to Jerusalem/ So we can die as a nation/ We’d rather stay in the Diaspora/ And fight for our liberation” is objectively a bop. Their most recent record Cradle Songs, Grave Songs, recorded during the pandemic, is also full of anti-Zionist anthems and songs of solidarity.”
