Daniel Kahn & Psoy Korolenko
The Unternationale vs. Partisans & Parasites

KFAR Jewish Arts Center

Critic's Pick
TimeOut Chicago 10/15/09
Verfremdungsklezmer = Punk Cabaret + Radical Yiddish Song + Gothic American Folk + Kiezmer Danse Macabre.


Saturday October 17, 2009 - Saturday October 17, 2009

9:30 pm


Critic's Pick
TimeOut Chicago 10/15/09
Verfremdungsklezmer = Punk Cabaret + Radical Yiddish Song + Gothic American Folk + Kiezmer Danse Macabre.


Fronted by Detroit-born singer-songwriter Daniel Kahn on vocals, accordion, piano and guitar, the band was formed in Berlin in fall of 2005. It also features with East German Bert Hildebrandt on clarinets, US expat composer Michael Tuttle on upright bass, and a rotating roster of some of Berlin and New Yorks best young Klezmer and Balkan players.

Their first album, The Broken Tongue,was released on Chamsa Records in Fall 2006 to critical acclaim. Their follow up, Partisans and Parasites (Oriente) follows suit with another set of intelligent, probing songs about identity and responsibility in Yiddish, Russian, and English.

Its standout hit, 6 Million Germans, weaves together Johnny Cash with Kurt Weill to tell the true story of poet Abba Kovner, who survived the Vina Ghetto and formed Dam Yehudi Nakam (Jewish Blood's Revenge) and planned a devious eye-for-an-eye plot that would make Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards blush.



They are joined by Russian/Jewish multilingual poet-singer Psoy Korolenko and The Unternationale. They balance between folk, klezmer, rap, sound poetry and intellectual cabaret/comedy to explore diaspora, territory, minorities, and borderlines. Discography includes 'Un Vo Iz Der Onheyb Fun Foterland' (Soviet Pop Classics in Yiddish translations and Klezmer arrangements)

Together, their European Jewish experience is both personal and a metaphor of trans cultural identity and ultimate otherness performed in English, Russian, French, and Yiddish.