Jewish Music Festival lands multitude of stars for its 26th year

For this year’s Jewish Music Festival, director Ellie Shapiro was seeking to book several major artists — and somehow they all became available at the same time.

So this year’s 26th annual festival now has an all-star feel to it, as well as a beshert quality. The seven main concerts and events will take place March 5 to 13 at several Berkeley locations, and as always, the JCC of the East Bay is the main sponsor, with many individual and corporate donations making the festival possible.

“Everything fell into place,” Shapiro said. “I think this is the strongest festival artistically we’ve ever done.”

“We booked them before they played World Music Expo in Copenhagen,” she said, referring to the band’s breakout performance last fall. “By next year, we probably couldn’t afford them.”

Same goes for mandolinist Avi Avital, who will perform with the Ger Mandolin Ensemble on March 6. Already a renowned classical musician, Avital is just coming off a 2010 Grammy nomination for best soloist with an orchestra — the first time a mandolin player had ever been nominated in that category. Shapiro booked him and the band just prior to the prestigious (and no doubt fee-increasing) honor.

On a roll, Shapiro also booked Veretski Pass. “They are a treasure,” Shapiro said of the revered klezmer trio, “and top of the line.” Veretski Pass has never played the Jewish Music Festival before, despite Shapiro’s many invitations, but having recently relocated to the Bay Area, a performance was kind of a no-brainer for the band. They play March 6 at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse.

Some artists long to perform at the festival, Shapiro said, but because they straddle multiple musical worlds, they never seem to find the time.

“He is as grounded in traditional Jewish music as he is in the Western classical tradition,” Shapiro said of the American-born, Munich-based violinist. “His parents were in the [klezmer] world. I’ve been following his career for years. Every year I wanted him, and this year he said yes. He’s a gift to the Jewish people.”

He will perform rarely heard pieces by Russian Jewish composers from the late 19th century, inspired by their mentor, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who told them to write music out of their ethnic tradition. Those composers formed the Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music, turning out pieces that echoed the entrenched classical traditions of the time, yet drew on Jewish folk melodies.

“The music is drop-dead gorgeous,” Shapiro said. “I asked Noah if he would research the repertoire, and he’s fallen in love with it.”

Bendix-Balgley will make it a family affair when his father, Yiddish dance instructor Erik Bendix, takes part in the festival’s annual finale dance party, to be held closing night, March 13, at the JCC of the East Bay in Berkeley. The closing event is co-sponsored by the Sherman-Anisman family in memory of Ursula Sherman, one of the co-founders of the Berkeley-Richmond JCC and also the founder of the Jewish Music Festival.

There are also side concerts, fundraiser musicales and tuneful Shabbat events (including one on March 4 at Temple Beth Sholom in San Leandro) that surround the festival. However, Shapiro did confess, “We’re a little smaller than in the past. This year we’re consolidating, and most events are in Berkeley.”

Also, there will be no sequel to last summer’s 2010 Jewish Music Festival event held outdoors at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens. These are still tough times for nonprofits, and cutbacks are inevitable. But that doesn’t mean the festival will short-change Bay Area Jewish music fans, Shapiro said.

“I feel it’s an obligation,” Shapiro said of staging the festival annually, in good times and bad. “There is an exploding international scene of incredible music ensured by Jewish culture and experience. Given who we are in this community, we have a responsibility to keep it coming. It’s too rich a scene to not make it happen somehow.”

26th Annual Jewish Music Festival will be held March 5 to 13 at several Berkeley locations. Festival pass $75-$90. Individual events $8-$25. Information: (510) 848-0237

Yemen Blues ensemble has ‘something magical going on’

“I see blues as something not only American,” Kalahani said by phone from his Tel Aviv home. “The Yemenite, West African and North African people have their blues. They just don’t call it that. It comes from the same place. It’s the same kind of soul singing.”

His recently released debut album, “Yemen Blues,” features Kalahani (a former bandmate of Idan Raichal) singing mostly originals in Arabic and Hebrew, many echoing the haunting Yemenite Jewish style he grew up on. Others go jazzier, with horns, strings and world-renowned Israeli bassist Omer Avital bringing up the rear. Kalahani’s reedy, otherworldly vocals tie everything together. 

Though it’s been only a few months since the band formed, Yemen Blues already has shaken up the world music scene. The band played key festivals in Copenhagen and Marseilles last year, and it went over so well that its itinerary is now booked for months.

And to think it all started with Kalahani making up Yemenite-flavored tunes in his bedroom.

An Israeli native of Yemenite heritage, Kalahani grew up exposed to the unique religious chanting heard in Yemenite synagogues. He remembers his father strictly mandating he learn the prayers, something he did not enjoy at the time but appreciates today.

“My father came from a town close to Sana’a,” he said, referring to the Yemeni capital. “Unfortunately [my parents] stopped talking Arabic, but I grew up on Yemeni culture. When I was a kid, I sang in Arabic but we never talked in Arabic. I am learning it again. Yemenite Arabic is even more rare than Yiddish these days.”

As for the blues, he fell for the music as a teen. Though he admired the brash urban styles of Muddy Waters and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Kalahani found himself especially thrilled with older, quieter acoustic bluesmen like Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and Leadbelly. Add in to the mix a thorough grounding in styles as diverse as Haitian Creole and North African maqamat, and Kalahani’s musical education was complete.

His stint in Raichal’s celebrated ensemble exposed him to the rigors of touring and recording. But veering away from his mentor’s Ethiopian-flavored rock, Kalahani started writing songs that melded the soulfulness of the blues with the spiritual longing of his Yemenite forbears.

“I could feel something magical going on,” he said. “I started to write songs about love, and then I wrote about the love of the desert as a metaphor. I wrote that it doesn’t matter where you come from: Your language is my language. Music can turn everything upside down. It’s more than entertainment; it’s a way of life.”

The music took a leap from notepad to recording studio after Kalahani met Avital three years ago. They shared demo tapes and soon started collaborating, slowly bringing in other well-known Israeli rock and jazz musicians.

“We played it really naturally,” Kalahani recalled, “trying this and that, and it was really fun. We said maybe cello and viola would be nice, then trombone. We were like little kids.”

The newly minted band sent a four-song demo to organizers of one of the many big music festivals in Marseilles. Yemen Blues got an invite, which led to a night Kalahani will never forget. Many Muslim music fans stood cheering for the Arabic-singing Israeli that night, an uncommon sight in a world split by conflict and suspicion.

“It was one of the biggest things in my life,” he said. “It was 1,500 people, Arabs, West African, Europeans, people from all over the world, and they were really excited about it. I got this energy from the audience. We were the success story of the festival.”

For Kalahani, that success has little to do with piling up the shekels and pimping his ride. It’s more about spreading a message of peace, love and harmony. That’s the message he wants to bring to Bay Area audiences at the Jewish Music Festival.

“Music is what I need to do in this world,” he said, “to bring my voice from a true place in my soul to the people. This is what people should base their lives on: all religions side by side, all political views side by side. It’s the deepest meaning you can get.”

Yemen Blues will perform at 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. March 5 at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley. $23-$25 advance, $30.50 at door. Information: (510) 848-0237 Advance tickets for 8 p.m. show are sold out.