Big City Blues / Daniel Kahn and The Painted Bird
Hamburg International Music Festival
Klezmer goes punk & cabaret: The Berlin-based American singer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Kahn and his band The Painted Bird serve up a clever mix of tumultuously instrumented old Yiddish songs and new songs in this high-energy programme, which includes a critical analysis of the state of US politics.
Please note: Hamburg’s port anniversary celebrations take place from 10-12 May in the immediate vicinity of the Elbphilharmonie. As a result, access to the Elbphilharmonie is restricted. Closures and restrictions during port anniversary.
»Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast.« A number of contemporary musicians who live in the liminal world between (at least) two cultures might well second this famous exclamation from Goethe’s »Faust«. On the one hand they make music in the traditional styles of their musical forebears – be that raï, which is often called the »blues of Algeria«; the melancholic Finnish tango; the wistful rembetiko sung by the Greeks expelled from Asia Minor; or the klezmer, which remembers the lost world of the Jewish schtetl.
On the other hand, however, these musicians also live in the present, in modern cities such as London, Paris and Berlin, where they soak up new influences and integrate them into the old genres. In the process they create a new blues of the big city – with one foot in the present and the other in the past.
Performers
Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird
Daniel Kahn vocals, accordion, piano
Christian Dawid clarinet, saxophone, trombone
Michael Tuttle double bass
Hampus Melin drums
Yeva Lapsker video
Festival
Hamburg International Music Festival