Jewish classic revisited

The Klezmatics celebrate their 40th anniversary with a reissue while a record label introduces Malawian music by The Kasambwe Brothers

- ■JOHN CLEWLEY

Good news fans of klezmer music.

The groundbreaking, award-winning klezmer outfit The Klezmatics have reissued their classic album Rhythm + Jews: Revisited (Piranha, Germany), which was recorded in 1990 and released in 1991. The reissue is part of the band's 40th anniversary celebrations.

Originally formed in New York's East Village in 1986, the band made an immediate impression, with their Yiddish, East European and Hasidic music roots brought into the later part of the 20th century with attitude and a willingness to blend klezmer with jazz, gypsy music, rock and the spirit of punk.

The band has released more than a dozen albums, toured globally and have appeared on TV shows across the planet. Bands like The Klezmatics, known as probably the most innovative of the new gen klezmer groups, have played and continue to play an important role in preserving the Yiddish language and music traditions by blending klezmer with contemporary music (including pieces sung in Aramaic and Bavarian). The band has also made the genre accessible and popular with younger audiences.

Led by trumpeter and producer Frank London, who has since worked with everyone from Itzhak Perlman to Gal Costa to poet Allen Ginsberg and David Byrne, the band won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album for the Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous Hanukkah in 2007.

London also leads his other projects. Readers may remember a recent review of an album by Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars.