Golem und Romashka

Klezmer fusion music is on a high and the people are ready to listen.... This weekend in Bloomington, Klezmer/Rock band Golem (www.golemrocks.com) will be performing at the Lotus Music Festival while on the East Coast, Romashka (www.romashka.net) will open for the Gipsy Kings at Manhattan hotspot Roxy.

What is all this?

Young people take on klezmer almost like a new language, reinventing basic tunes, enhancing and abandoning any improvisational boundaries---basically leaving genre in the dust. Romashka's latest CD brings together musicians with a variety of backgrounds such a jazz, gipsy, klezmer, classical, bluegrass, it goes on and on. Golem has no qualms about breaking out new forms, even transforming traditional lyrics for the 21st century club maven. It's like your grandmother's famous matzoh ball soup but with a kick of tequila.

Check out Romashka's new music video. You'll be hooked before you know it.

://www.thenewpop.com/talents.php?id=48" target="_blank">The New Pop

Isthmus Relations

It has been awhile since I've written without the assistance of a fascinating oral history interview. Now that I have been away from El Salvador for a few months, it is much easier to view my research with a more critical eye.

As I delve into my graduate work, I realize that this interest in the Central American Jewry extends beyond El Salvador. Costa Rica and Panama would culminate in a trio of phenomenal comparative study. Panama with its strong Sephardic and Ashkenaz populations and Costa Rica with its Eastern European core and now growing religiously progressive population. Amongst these three countries, El Salvador remains the most integrated (amongst Jews). Although my research in Costa Rica and Panama is only in preliminary stages, I hope to be able to report back about Costa Rica's Eastern European shtetl origins in the coming weeks.

For now, news from El Salvador is grim with crime escalating and people taking justice and security "into their own hands." The Jewish community just finished celebrating Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Let's hope that the domestic situation improves....somehow.