Jumu Presents Nu Juwish Music [Box-Set]

Thrown into a world of twists and turns, like a billiard ball gone mad. The perfect setting for a joyful cacophony. Joyful, that yes, cacophony, not a bit of it, more like a mix spinning around a centre... totally off-centre, and what's more, eccentric. This new Jewish music revolves around so-called Central Europe. A centripetal movement to make you giddy, if you follow the steps of this "via sacra": this compilation "musiports" us from Montreal to Amsterdam, from Paris to Tel Aviv, from London to... yes... Toulouse, and from New York to... of course... New York! In a word, a far cry from the Mittel Europe that it originally represented. Ah! you might say, the Diaspora.

Let us lose our heads some more while going back in time: these distant relations liable to sow confusion in rational minds. This multi-faceted galaxy has little to do with the Torah, the Jewish bible. There is the equally itinerant music of the gypsies, from gypsy jazz to milk bottle players, passing by the Balkan fanfares (which are not all gypsy, by the way!), the Greek lament of the rebetiko, the Ottoman anthology and other related dishes. A veritable musical jungle from Central Europe that flourished during the 1930s.

And so, the Nazis having gassed this wealth, after the War the uprooted Klezmer culture experienced a revival... in Brooklyn, under the welcoming wings of jazz. Together they improvised a new saraband. Decades passed, technology got involved in true urban spirit, with an injection of ska, hip hop, reggae, drum 'n' bass, dub and other electronic variations added to give the 21st century's klezmer attitude: mixing, remixing and... ever more mixing, a mad amalgam.

And that's not all. The record labels, more often than not independent (but not always...) that relay this galaxy are German (Essay, Piranha), French (Label Blue, Monslip), American (J Dub Records), English (Outcaste). A happy dispersion for music with such varied roots.

The NU JUwish MUsic, is all that and more? Yes, with a sense of humour, don't forget the cardinal Jewish virtue of making fun of themselves; plus all the imaginable ingredients, and others unimaginable, like the Latino of the Hoodios (judios, Jews in "spic", the Latino lingo from Spanish Harlem), heir to the "bagels & bongos" from New York in the 60s. Or the spirit of the crazy "cabaret" that mixes the elders' Yiddish, Hebrew and the unifying English. A true "balagan", a jumble, a mess, as they say in Israel.

Don't see in this nebulous group of musicians the slightest trace of a communitarian attitude, this is for the open-minded with curious ears: it's not overly catholic, prospers in the antipodes of orthodoxy and is not solely aimed at the Diaspora. And above all, eons ago it won its freedom from the synagogue.

Proof? JuMu, the compiling record label's story. Two music-lovers, Bruno Nahon, from Oran, film producer, Sephardi into Ashkenazi culture, and Claude Szwimer, of Jewish Polish descent, with a passion for...Cuban music, to the point of swapping his job as an accountant for that of tour manager for Latino bands. Together they replied to an ad published in Libération by a philanthropic and humanistic Jewish Foundation looking for new projects. Their idea was a modern compilation of their heritage, somewhere between pop and electro, in the spirit of the English group Oi Va Voi or the New Yorkers on J Dub Records, to make known this emerging culture outside their community.

They obtained a grant, and whilst developing the compilation inspired by this still nascent scene, they had the unexpected chance to hastily organise the first Parisian concert of New York's Hassidic reggae toaster, Matisyahu. JuMu became a musical agency: their first concert, 400 people on the 11th November at the Scène Bastille, a third of the audience Jewish, and all this before Matisyahu signed with Sony and sold a million albums in the USA! The supporting act, a mad singer-rapper-accordion player from Montreal, SoCalled, another "client" for JuMu.

Next came the Hip Hop Hoodios' performance in Paris, an exciting combo from Brooklyn that mixes rap, Latino and well-worn old Jewish songs. In the space of two years, JuMu presented most of the groups on this album to audiences in Paris. The written press and some radio stations (Nova, FIP) gave their support. A flourishing festival in Paris in the Autumn of 2005, Klezmopolitan, provided this neo-klezmer movement the chance to branch out. A weekly show programmed at the end of Shabbat (Saturday at 7pm!) began in 2006 on Radio Shalom: Balagan Box, presented by Laurence Haziza, with Szwimer and Nahon, invited them all.

Behind the almost-veterans David Krakauer, Frank London and the Amsterdam Klezmer Band, surged new blood like the rapper, DJ and musician SoCalled, the violinist Sophie Solomon, singer Yael Naim, the Israelis from New York (Balkan Beat Box), from Paris (Boogie Balagan) and... from Israel (Boom Pam).

Of course, things were also happening on the Sephardic side. But...hold on there, this is only volume one! There it was, a fluctuating movement was born, the compilation could see the light of day, and it would surprise those with a narrow-minded vision of Jewish music. Rich in heritage, of course, but also astonishingly modern, for the dance floor and not only for bar mitzvah (the Jewish communion), in other words, completely "mechougueu" as my grandmother Nadia used to say in Yiddish. Nuts, crazy, as we say today...

Rémy Kolpa Kopoul
ConneXionneur
Radio Nova - Paris