The event, which celebrates the instrumental and festive music born in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in the eighteenthe century, takes place largely in Paris, but also in Lyon, Nice and Montpellier, from November 9 to 27.
The Jazz’n’Klezmer festival celebrates from November 9 to 27 its 20e anniversary with its temple guardians, Denis Cuniot, Yom and DJ Socalled, the Israeli jazz scene, and an increasingly assumed oriental touch. This year, the concerts are mainly planned in Paris, epicenter of the event, but also in Lyon, Nice and Montpellier.
“It’s a festival that is evolving well, which remains on its editorial line and which manages to renew itself every year”, considers the pianist Denis Cuniot, on the program for the eighth time in twenty years, in a creation for klezmer melodies and poetry. He was one of the first in France to revive the memory of klezmer, an instrumental and festive music born in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in the 18th century.
After nearly disappearing under the influence of pogroms, successive waves of emigration and the Holocaust, this music with repetitive motifs leading to trance was reborn in the 1970s with Buenos Aires as its starting point. This revival spread to Europe and France in the 1990s. Driven by this revival, Albert Kadouche, then director of the Espace Rachi Cultural Action Center, a center of Jewish culture in Paris, and his assistant Deborah Benassouline , also a jazz singer, launch the Jazz’n’Klezmer festival.
“I’m not sure his audience is growing, but there’s an enduring klezmer scene, very varied, with all facets of this music,” believes Denis Cuniot. Himself, the clarinettist Yom and DJ Socalled, will each give their version of a klezmer which, while evolving, has opened up to other styles: sometimes extroverted, festive, electro, mystical or literary.
Jazz’n’Klezmer also highlights the Israeli scene, represented this year by the duo Omer Avital (double bass)-Yonathan Avishai (piano) and the quartet of saxophonist Eli Degibri. The oriental touch will be brought in closing on November 27 by the Arabian-rock and the electro-oriental trances of the Marseille group Temenik Electric and the duo DuOud mixing the Middle Eastern notes of the oud – the equivalent of the lute in the Arab world – and electro. Or by Yemen blues, an Israeli band that offers a fusion of Yemeni songs, groove and funk.