Artist.......: Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars
Album........: Carnival Conspiracy
Label........: Piranha
Genre........: World/Klezmer/Brass
Catnr........: 1902
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Jan-15-2006
str.date.....: Jan-10-2006
quality......: VBR/44.1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a
track title time
01. in your garden twenty fecund fruit trees 03:52
02. oh agony, you are so sweet like sugar i must 04:16
to eat you up
03. another glass of wine to give succor to my 04:00
ailing existence
04. midnight banda judφa 05:24
05. in the marketplace all is subterfurge 03:07
06. who knows one 05:54
07. pantagruel, shiker hindert prozent 05:39
08. a time of desire - curha mix 05:43
09. our ancestors forty thousand years wide 05:15
10. out of what 05:53
11. mi yamalay 03:15
12. borracho #1 the cobbles in the street moan 07:12
for you
Runtime 59:30 min
Size 85,9 MB
Release Notes:
Few people know that the first Jews in North
America came to New York on a boat from Recife,
Brazil 350 years ago. Marking the
Semiseptcentennial of this momentous occasion,
Frank LondonÆs Klezmer Brass All StarsÆ Carnival
Conspiracy: In the Marketplace All is Subterfuge
(released by PIRANHA Musik/Harmonia Mundi) brings
the spirit and aesthetic of Brazilian carnival
together with the street sounds of Brass Band and
Klezmer in the celebration of what London calls
ôthe original New York Jewish music.ö Forty artists
from eight countries and four continents meet in
this æband thatÆs not a band.Æ
Carnival is intended to subvert. Mikhail Bakhtin,
the Russian granddaddy theorist of the
ôcarnivalesqueö (both the description of a
historical phenomenon of carnival and the name he
gave to a certain literary tendency), proclaimed
that the purpose of carnival is to liberate the
masses. During the great carnivals of Medieval
Europe, and their later manifestations in Latin
America and the Caribbean, the period of carnival
served to temporarily reverse the social order,
shake things up, and shock people into new ways of
experiencing the world. This philosophy was not
lost on Frank London. References abound in Carnival
Conspiracy: Bakhtin, Rabelais (the French patron
saint of carnivalesque literature), and George
Clinton are invoked in the liner notes, laying out
a feast for the intellectual, for the
tongue-in-cheek cultural critic, as much as for the
layman, the booty shaker and the Hasid. Ever the
trickster, London and his merry band take listeners
on a wild ride.
A departure from Frank LondonÆs other projects (The
Klezmatics, the preeminent band in the Klezmer
revival in the 1970s, and Hasidic New Wave, an
improv-Hasidic-jazz combo) FLKBAS is rooted in the
spirit of Brass Band music, which historically
serves as the musical manifestation of a community,
be it a town, school, union or police force. FLKBAS
is the band for the global village, and its sound
reflects the reality in which its members live: A
world in which a Lower East Side New York Jew walks
down his block every day and hears Hip Hop and
Dominican bands blasting from beat boxes, and
Hasidic and Cantorial Music issued forth from the
loudspeakers of Mitzvah-mobiles that cruise the
city.
Carnival Conspiracy is indeed a kind of musical
travelogue. Just when you think you are hearing a
traditional Klezmer song on ôMidnight Banda Judφa,ö
in come the sounds of Bavarian beer hall and a
Mexican banda, and a song that starts with Brave
Old WorldÆs Michael Alpert singing in Yiddish ends
in Spanish. Then, when you think you have gotten a
handle on the traditional beats of Eastern European
wedding songs mixed with the Brazilian beats of New
York Maracat·, suddenly you are lost in the echoing
loops of a dubby version of ôA Time of Desire,ö a
traditional tune arranged by Frank London and
remixed by Brooklyn-based Curha (ôa
multi-instrumental electronic music creator who
thrives on deconstructions and reconstructions of
everyday noiseö). Once you stop trying to locate
yourself in the origins and philosophy of the album
and its references, you throw up your hands, dance
a samba-hora jig, and find yourself lost in the
transnational frenzy of joy and ecstasy that is the
essence of carnival.
Rare gems and appearances grace each track. The
communal voice of Kol Isha, a group of female
vocalists subversively named after a Hebrew
injunction against men hearing the voice of women
singing, weave in and out of much of the album.
Eighty-year old Ukrainian master clarinetist German
Goldenshtayn makes his one and only known recorded
appearance here, as well as bringing his vast
Moldavan Jewish repertoire to the album. Avant
garde Ukrainian folk singer Marjana Sadowska does
her æecstatic kolomeyke thingÆ on the opening
track, bolting you upright in your seat, and
hopefully, bringing you to your feet. ôThis is not
background music,ö remarks London dryly.
Get readyùthe cover art should prepare you for the
ride inside. Deliciously carnival inspired drawings
by Belgium-based artist and klezmer violinist
Richard Kenigsman pick up the same themes close to
Frank LondonÆs heart: traditional Jewish culture
seen both on its own terms and through a
radical-feminist-populist-revolutionary-sacred-as-p
rofane-and-vice-versa lens.
Humorously rumored to be a troupe of drunkards that
invented Klezmer, the ôInebriated Orchestraö is
busted on this album as a sober group who are
serious about shaking things up with wit and
wisdom. But when the bubble of hype bursts, you are
left with the fact that this music intoxicates.
Carnival Conspiracy invites transcendence on all
levels; it will make you dance past your critical
mind, laugh yourself into liberation, and
reconsider the meaning of Jewish music. Of all the
CDs recorded by Frank LondonÆs Klezmer Brass
Allstars, this is by far the third.