Michael Alpert & Julian Kytasty
Night Songs from a Neighboring Village - Ballads of the Ukrainian & Yiddish Heartland (CD)

RIENCD86

Musicians:
Michael Alpert - voice, violin, guitar, accordion
Julian Kytasty - vocals, banduras, sopilka (wooden flute)
Two men, two languages, some books, microphones. A fiddle, a guitar, an accordion, and, of course, some beautifully crafted banduras and flutes. Two musical traditions from an old world, Yiddish and Ukrainian. Two musicians exploring the what-might-have-beens of these musical cultures left in fragments in the aftermath of the twentieth century totalitarian psychosis. Michael Alpert and Julian Kytasty are gatherers – at times
wool-gathering – and on their long way they collected many pieces they now bring together in this recording.
The album “Night Songs from a Neighboring Village” discloses the inherited worlds of two artists who grew up as sons of immigrants from today Ukranian territories to the US. It opens up worlds of memory, tradition
and loss, the constant, gnawing imagining of lands and people left behind. More than that, these worlds are brought together by the two artists. Thus, one can imagine alternate homelands, alternate histories – an alternate Ukraine, a different twentieth century – if you listen to the conversation of these two musical traditions, intertwining. This creates space for shared joys, pains and passions, stories and tales: shared history and imagined shared present. It evokes a sense of coming home, but to a land we have never seen, that may not exist beyond where the music can conjure it.
At times almost psychedelic, at times contemplative, Alpert and Kytasty’s music triggers thoughts about the conflicts of present-day Ukraine. The Night Songs remind us that the new demons that have lured present-day Ukraine on to war, terror and fear are the old ones in fact. May this inspiring music overcome borders, mental and cultural ones, front lines – those to neighboring villages.

Skladby:

1. Adam and Eve 04:06
2. Bay Mayn Mames Shtibele 00:44
3. Buhai 03:14
4. A Shpay In Yam 05:20
5. Two Brothers 04:28
6. Nukh Havdule 03:27
7. Wedding of the Birds 02:02
8. S‘iz Gekimen / U Susida 02:02
9. Chernobyl 05:06
10. Rekrutska 04:10
11. Night Songs 03:44
12. Loy Seyvoyshi / Many Years Waltz 02:03
13. Homebrew (live) 02:35

Rok vydání: 2014

Žánr: Klezmer & Izrael & Jiddish & Sephardic
Label: Oriente Musik