The New York Times

Here Strides the Bride: Catskills Kitsch in Manhattan
June 11, 2005
By Kathryn Sattuck

As June weddings go, it was a colorful affair, even by New York standards. A six-foot-tall bride, resplendent in white silk, rippling biceps and five o'clock shadow. A five-foot-tall groom whose tuxedo couldn't hide evidence of breasts. And R-rated vows spoken beneath a chuppah at the Knitting Factory, the downtown rock club.

But for five hours on Thursday night, 200 ticket-buying revelers seemed not to notice anything amiss in the club's subterranean Tap Room, where they nibbled on deli meats beneath garlands of fake flowers as Golem, the klezmer rock band, gave itself a wedding in a 'Manhattan 2005' version of an old Catskills tradition.

'Every Labor Day weekend the great Jewish hotels threw a 'mock wedding' to end the summer season, complete with cross-dressers, irreverence, the whole nine yards, including, of course, a klezmer band,' Annette Ezekiel, the band's founder, said earlier that day as she dealt with last-minute details before the performance piece.

'I suspect they did it in the Catskills for the very reasons that we are: that carnivalesque desire to make fun of social rules and hierarchies. After all, these were new immigrants trying to assimilate into American life, and yet they had their Jewish traditions. I think this was their way of letting loose, turning tradition on its head, celebrating it, making fun of it.'

The 'Golem Gets Married' printed on the yarmulkes handed out to the male guests was just the beginning. Golem, whose slogan, 'Where Eastern Europe Meets the Lower East Side,' just begins to define its ironic streak, had executed the details down to the last rugelach.

At 8 p.m., the crowds parted like the Red Sea as a trumpet's plaintive call announced the arrival of the groom, played by Michelle Citrin and his - um, her - parents, at the chuppah erected on the stage. The bride, portrayed by Jonathan Chick, wasn't far behind, as she - ah, he - shimmied down the aisle in a sleeveless beaded confection and billowy veil.

Standing before the 'rabbi,' played by Aaron Diskin, one of Golem's singers, the couple pledged their troth in vows that promised 'glove,' 'lotion' and oral sex on demand. Mr. Diskin recited a poem written for the event:

Awful flavor in my mouth

I turn to look left

Bleak morning

What, you again?

Ten minutes later, the marriage sealed by the breaking of a glass and a swooning kiss, Ms. Ezekiel picked up her accordion and let out a joyful wail. Soon, the crowd was roping through the room like a sweaty snake as Golem whipped the music into a frenzy. As the fever pitch rose, so did the perspiration level.

'I'm into cool, multicultural stuff, and I like the way Golem inverts very traditional rituals,' Larry Samuel, a trend consultant, said, mopping his brow. 'Just make sure you say that everyone was shvitzing.'

Suddenly, Ms. Ezekiel, Mr. Diskin and their bandmates - Alicia Jo Rabins on violin, David Griffin on trumpet, Taylor Bergren-Chrisman on bass and William Lee on drums - let loose with 'Honky Tonk Woman' a rendition that would have been as at home on the streets of Tbilisi as it was in TriBeCa. Jeremy Parzen, Ms. Ezekiel's husband and a member of the faux-French band Les San Culottes, joined in on guitar

'We usually sing obscure Yiddish songs and have so much fun,' Ms. Ezekiel announced from the stage. 'But we love playing covers so much that we decided to do that for one night.'

The crowd whistled and roared.

Indeed, it was Golem's ambivalence toward the gigs that pay the bills that got them to the altar in the first place.

'Musicians are always slightly embarrassed to play weddings,' Ms. Ezekiel said. 'I mean, here we are this seriously artsy band playing cheesy wedding covers to make a living. So instead of being embarrassed, we decided to revel in it.'

The same might be said of Golem, founded by Ms. Ezekiel, a classically trained pianist, dancer and linguist, in 2001 in honor of a musical passion that began when her mother introduced her to the klezmer craze of the 80's.

So she rang up Mr. Diskin, a high school friend who is a New York hard rocker, and asked, 'You want to do some Jewish music?'

What emerged was 'klezmer with a rock sensibility,' Ms. Ezekiel said. Drawing on old recordings and music discovered on her travels, Ms. Ezekiel collects tunes and then, with her band mates, tweaks the traditional strains of Yiddish, Balkan, Slavic and Gypsy music into something only vaguely evoking their origin.

'We don't change the music,' she said. 'It's just more in our attitude. We wear sexy clothes, we scream and yell and we jump around.'

That's not the only way they buck tradition. The band uses vocals, 'more like a Second Avenue Yiddish theater,' Ms. Ezekiel explained, adding, 'And the typical klezmer instrument is clarinet, and we have violin instead, just because I like the sound better.'

These days, Golem fills venues as far-flung as the Knitting Factory and local Jewish community centers, where the band quickly learned that older crowds appreciate their newfangled traditions as much as younger ones - if not more.

'Sometimes when we go to play at J.C.C.'s, they say we have to tone it down,' Ms. Ezekiel said. 'But these people are the ones who really get our jokes because they understand the language.'

At the Knitting Factory, where the audience spanned three generations, the language being spoken, as in the case of most weddings, appeared to be that of love.

'I like the music, I like the scene, and I thought I might meet an available woman,' said Rob Lederer, an executive coach whose eyes kept focusing on a far corner of the room. 'I met someone, but it's probably a little premature to ask if she's available,' he said.

'But I did give her a gold ring,' he went on, pointing to the bar scattered with wedding tchotchkes, including plastic wedding bands.

Later, between renditions of 'Build Me Up Buttercup' and 'Brickhouse,' Mr. Lederer was spotted leading a dark-haired beauty onto the dance floor, a gold band glistening on her left hand.