Happy Birthday, Frank!

(originally posted at גלות ײַד)

So, it was quite a night. First stop was our regular Upper West Side svive meeting. A group of about 10 of us meet once or twice a month to speak Yiddish, eat Triscuits and sing silly songs. Last night we met in Menachem Yankl's apartment and who showed up but a BBC radio crew!

It was pretty hilarious. The BBC dude is making a documentary about Yiddish. So, he wants to come to a svive where us yung 'uns are speaking Yiddish. Well, I don't think Denis actually counted on us, you know, speaking Yiddish. We chatted for a few minutes אויף ײַדיש after which he realized that what he really wanted was English about Yiddish.

Thus ensued a pretty amusing hour or so of his asking us leading questions about Yiddish and Israel and why we're so angry. (Well, half of us are angry, half of us are pretty chill, according to the amount of cultural transmission that happened in our homes.) For once forethought and planning were on my side. As the crew packed up to leave I had issues of Jewish Currents at the ready for their further "research."

Anyway, after all that talk about why we chose to speak a useless, non-functioning, dead language, Kh-R and I headed over to the birthday party of the year at Drom. Frank London pretty much is the klezmer industrial complex in New York City. If it's Jewish and Music and crazy good, well, Frank is probably involved in some way. Frank was an original member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, a founder of the Klezmatics and has collaborated with pretty much every cool musician in every cool genre known. I don't know how he does so much (clones perhaps?) but he's an inspiration. And his band is fun to ogle. Sorry!!

Here's his brass band performing last night. Yum.

I tried to get the dancers in the foreground, but it was pretty dark. But they're there. If you like the tune they're playing, you must immediately run out and purchase the Klezmer Brass All-Stars Carnival Conspiracy. A delicious wall of brass and rhythm.