Mark Ginsburg … new album. Photo: Dean Ginsburg

LEXI LANDSMAN

PERFORMING as a young soprano in a synagogue choir in Camps Bay, Cape Town, ignited Mark Ginsburg’s lifelong passion for cantorial music.

“Cantorial music struck me as something very beautiful. It was only much later on that I thought back to my earliest memories of music and that’s what made me dig back,” he says.

Ginsburg grew up in an Orthodox household in Cape Town and moved to Australia in 1982. Now 53, and living in Sydney, the musician recognises the indelible mark that his early “stomping ground” had on his life and his latest offering.

Last month he launched The Mark Ginsburg Band’s debut album, Generations, at the Basement in Sydney. He says that apart from the album being inspired by cantorial music, it also reflects the “heartbeat of Africa”, which he says is “in my blood as well”.
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NADIA LEVENE

JERUSALEM - Jerusalem is set to rock with a 5-hour music marathon on Tu B’Av, the traditional Jewish day of love. The event also commemorates 40 years since the historic 3-day Woodstock Festival in upstate New York, in the summer of ‘69.

The Jerusalem Woodstock Revival event will feature top home-grown cover bands performing the legendary songs of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and The Doors.
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Beethoven

MIRIT KUSHNIT-STROMATZA

KFAR VRADIM, Israel — Officials at a northern Israel community found an original way to protest the unbearably loud noises coming from weddings in a nearby Arab village: “Bombarding” their Arab neighbours with classical music.

If you happened to be in the Kfar Vradim area Thursday night you would have been able to enjoy Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Mozart’s Requiem and Puccini’s opera Tosca. The pieces were played at high volume in Kfar Vradim and were heard miles away.

By now, Kfar Vradim residents are intimately familiar with a recurring annoyance: Every summer, once wedding season is underway in nearby Arab villages, Jewish residents complain of Arab music being played at a loud volume until the wee hours of the night. The weddings are routinely followed by angry calls to police. In some cases, the music is turned down for a short while, only to resume shortly after police officers leave the scene.

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AJN STAFF

THE winning plays of the Melbourne short-play festival Short+Sweet will be performed in Sydney, starting this week. Plays to snare the top Short+Sweet awards in Melbourne included Adam Gelin’s Religion Shop, which won both the runner-up award for best comedy writing and the people’s choice award. 

Gelin, husband of Sydney’s Emanuel Synagogue Rabbi Jackie Ninio, is a Short+Sweet veteran, having won the best new talent and best director awards in previous years. He is a regular actor in Emanuel’s Purim spiels and star of Kosher Theatreports.

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African-American Jewish hip-hop artist Y-Love has plenty to rap about. LORIN BLUMENTHAL reports.

ASK any East Coast African-American rapper what their morning routine is and you probably would not find davvening Shacharit featuring high on their list. 

This is not the case for Baltimore-born, Crown Heights-based rapper Y-Love -– a soulful Jewish hip-hop artist who grew up in the hood. Y-Love, 31, born Sean Jordan, is quite obviously not your typical Jew. 

Born to an Ethiopian father and Puerto Rican mother, his interest in Judaism was sparked at age seven by a television advertisement, finishing with the salutation “Happy Passover”. Read the full story

CHANTAL ABITBOL

IMAGINE an empire down to its last six people, including its ailing 400-year-old king. His palace is crumbling, his marriage is failing, and outside there is just an abyss of nothingness.

Then pause for a moment and think of what this world might sound like. Tucked away in his sound studio in Melbourne’s South Bank, 31-year-old Jewish sound designer Russell Goldsmith did just that. With about 300 gigabytes worth of library recordings at his fingertips, Goldsmith spent hours conjuring up the soundtrack of this fantastical world for Company B and Malthouse Melbourne’s Exit the King. Read the full story

LEXI LANDSMAN

JOHNNY Clegg is known around the world as “the White Zulu” -– a title that carried immense significance against the backdrop of a politically charged and divisive apartheid South Africa. “It started off as a kind of in-joke in the early 1970s because people in the townships called me that because I stood out from other white people,” Clegg explains over the phone from South Africa. 

“I was very connected to the local Zulu migrant culture in Johannesburg … It was said with affection and bit of a laugh.”

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LEON GETTLER 

HERE’S a tip for anyone wanting to pursue a life in music: get another job. That’s probably the only way you will be able to make ends meet, or live a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. There are exceptions to the rule. But even these musicians admit they are lucky. As one Sydney pianist, who did not want to be named, told The Australian Jewish News: “I make $20,000 a year. I could get more money working at McDonalds.”

Even in symphony orchestras, most musicians would seldom make more than $50 an hour. And that’s for people who have trained their entire life, and who continue to train and practise. As jazz pianist Steve Sedergreen said, there are very few pure musicians who make a living off their art. “It’s your day gig. It can be anything. It can be teaching, it can be related to working for a publishing company or working in a record store.” Read the full story

LEXI LANDSMAN

AT the age of just four, Rita Kleinstein climbed onto a chair at her uncle’s engagement party. The room went quiet as she moved her dark, long hair out of her face and began to sing a Persian song. “They gave me a microphone and there were two violinists and I stood there and I knew this is my home this is where I want to be all my life,” she says from Israel, her voice gentle and tinged with an Israeli accent. 

“I think this was the exact time that I understood that this is what I want to do even though I was so young.”  It was then -– on the soil of her birthplace Iran -– that the desire to be a singer was born. Fast-forward four decades, traverse to another country, and Rita is a household name in Israel and renowned internationally. Read the full story

ROBYN ARYA

INTERNATIONAL singer Lior proved to be one of the star attractions at the 33rd Port Fairy Folk Festival held at the western Victorian seaside town over the Labour Day weekend.

Lior wooed the crowds with his charismatic charm, vitality and many hit songs. The Port Fairy festival comes alive for four days with thousands of  visitors and a host of performers from Australia and overseas offering a fusion of folk, blues, world roots and country music.

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