FREYLACH TIME!: Freylach Time! The Klezmer Dance Band

Freylach Time!

Freylach Time! The Klezmer Dance Band

© 2003 Freylach Time (634479097225)

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Freylach Time. plays Klezmer music as it was meant to be played, for dancing at a simcha, with all the joy and intensity of an old world Jewish party.

notes

This is the long awaited first recording of Freylach Time! The Klezmer Dance Band. Freylach Time! is one of the most popular Klezmer bands in North Carolina. Until now, they could only be heard live, playing at weddings, mitzvahs, and concerts throughout the Southeast. This recording is a collection of some of their favorite dance and concert tunes. Some are soulful, some are joyful, all are in a traditional Klezmer style. It includes a 6-minute live dance medley from a wedding, where you can hear the couple being lifted in the chairs, and the guests singing along! Here is a clip from their liner notes:

"Really what I want to share with our audience is the joy of this music. A Gentile friend once described Klezmer music as "having a laugh in it and a tear in it." Early in my experience performing these tunes, I discovered how music makes the simkhe (party for a special occasion). We not only provide a musical expression for the joy and celebration, the music is a key to feeling the emotion of the event. Whether the wedding is orthodox or secular, once the guests have danced the freylachs (joyful dances), they truly feel they have been to a Jewish wedding. This music is the gateway to the heart, or is it the kishkes? It's really more of a gut thing. "

This recording features Freylach Time! regulars, Riki Friedman on clarinet, Mike McQuown on accordion, and Hal Schnee on string bass. There are also 3 guest musicians; David Licht (of the Klezmatics) plays drums on every song, Hy Marks sings a wonderful Yiddish medley, and Jud Flato plays a clarinet doina, as well as a second clarinet on some of the freylachs.

reviews

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  • Splendid
    author: Leah Halevy

    This little Ashkenazi swayed, clapped her hands and danced all through the CD! Roots! Freylach!

  • Up lifting, Feel good music, a pleasure to listen to!
    author: Don Critari
  • traditional, for those of us who dance TODAY.
    author: Ari Davidow

    It isn't just that this is excellent klezmer. These days, there are good-to-great klezmer bands in just about any town where there are Jews, from Buenos Aires to the wilds of Colorado. Even Bar/Bat Mitzvah DJ's now include a "klezmer" set for the parents as part of the usual rap and rock music package. But this CD is what happens when musicians who love the music and who play it well together make simkhas. It's what happens when a member of the family asks if he can sing a few oldies with the band and we wind up with something as jaw-dropping as the recordings of "Sheyn vi di levone" and "Bei Mir bis du Sheyn" on this recording. It's the intensity of the live, closing medley as the family claps and dances to the music in a manner that we have come to associate with Chassidic gatherings. This is what happens when an old tradition, part of the binding music of Eastern European Jewish tradition, is revived and becomes again part of what binds a community together, in joy, today, in the here and now. This is what makes Freylach Time special. It doesn't hurt that David Licht, drummer of the Klezmatics, and the current exemplar of what klezmer drumming should be, sits in on these recordings. But the real stars of this CD are Freylach Time and the community and the music that they share together. The klezmer revival succeeded. If you want to hear how joyous music brings people together, and brings people to their feet, dancing and singing together, this is the CD you have been looking for. As the band's name says, "it's freylach time!" Enjoy.

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