Klez Nzazou / Various - Klez N'zazou [CD]

The whirling twisting music form known as Klezmer, which originated among the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe, can have a sad or festive climate. Here it has all the sweat of a swing club in Harlem during the Depression, as the Gefilte Swing band, led by Alexandre Litwak, plays it's own festive brand of jazz that borders on world music, with occasional forays into the world of pop. They nonchalantly borrow from the zoot-suit subculture with a shameless desire to live for swing and the result is hedonistic, generous and invigorating. And like the Carte de Séjour group in the 80's, they also have their own version of Douce France, which Charles Trenet wrote during the war, only this time it's sung in Yiddish.