World of klezmer music
AUSTRALIA was represented at a major klezmer arts festival in Canada recently by Freydi Mrocki, lead singer of popular Melbourne band Klezmania.
She was among more than 200 performers from 16 countries at the biennial Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto, which featured music, art and cultural events from August 28 to September 3.
The not-for-profit festival was established 17 years ago to showcase artists working in klezmer and Yiddish revival, and it has grown into a major international event to share Jewish culture with a wider audience. Most events are held at the Harbourfront Centre and, thanks to sponsorship, are free to the public.
Mrocki, who has been a member of Klezmania since the band was formed 20 years ago and is also a Yiddish teacher, says it was a great thrill to be at the festival.
“It was such a vibrant festival with the emphasis on Yiddish, klezmer and Eastern European music,” she says. “It was an opportunity to hear top bands from Canada, America and Europe. We feel isolated in Australia.”
Among the line-up of performers were the Yemen Blues band from Israel, Asian band Shashmaqam, Klezmerson from Mexico, Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur, and Argentinian duo Lerner and Moguilevsky.
Mrocki says that the four-member Klezmania group was invited to perform at the Ashkenaz Festival, but funding cuts suffered by festival organisers meant that only she was able to attend the event.
“At the festival I did a presentation about Jewish-Yiddish Australia and sang a Yiddish song about Carlton at the Global Shtetl Cabaret concert hosted by Aviva Chernick.”
She also participated in a tribute concert to Canadian Yiddish writer Chava Rosenfarb, who died last year. A team of actors and singers presented readings of Rosenfarb’s work alongside songs and vignettes of her life.
“For many years, Chava used to spend six months of the year in Melbourne and I got to know her well,” says Mrocki. “Klezmania put one of her poems to music and recorded it as Shpil Gitare.”
Melbourne community leader Bono Weiner supported Rosenfarb’s literary work when she was in Melbourne, and it was during a visit to Canada in 1995 to see her that Weiner died.
“People at the festival wondered why an Australian was on the panel talking about such an important Canadian writer until I got to the part about her Australian connection,” says Mrocki.
At the festival Mrocki also introduced Boris Sandler’s film, Yosl Birshteyn: A Kiss in Jerusalem, which was part of his series Monologues with Yiddish Writers.
Birshteyn lived in Melbourne from 1937 to 1949 before making aliyah. Sandler is best known as the editor of the New York Forward.
The festival provided an opportunity to meet musicians from many parts of the world, including members of Canadian klezmer band Beyond The Pale, which toured Australia last year.
“I met them in Australia when they toured and it was great to see them again. Eric Stein (band founder and artistic director of the Ashkenaz Festival), Aleksandar Gajic (violinist) and Bret Higgins (bass) showed me around town,” says Mrocki.
She is confident about the future of klezmer. “Young people are being drawn to klezmer music all the time, and there are new bands starting up.”
REPORT by Danny Gocs
PHOTO of Singer Freydi Mrocki (centre) on the Toronto stage with (front, from left) singer/actress Theresa Tova, singer Mitch Smolkin, actor Moish Kanatkin and Goldie Morgentaler (Chava Rosenfarb’s daughter).
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