Hello from Krakow!

We’re sitting in the parlor of the Eden Hotel in the heart of Kazimierz the old Jewish quarter of Cracow, Poland. As we compose this blog chronicling the concerts, late nights, concerts, jams and conversations we’ve had over the last week, Chassidic Cantor Benzion Miller, from Borough Park in Brooklyn, and Cantor Danny Gilder sing casually in the background. The neighborhood is crowded with tourists, mostly Poles, some foreigners, including an increasing number of Western Jews, attracted by the workshops, lectures, exhibitions, films and above all stellar performances that make up the 17th Annual Jewish Cultural Festival.

For more than half a millennium, the Jewish community created a vibrant life here. That ended abruptly in March, 1941, when the Nazis forced everyone across the Vistula River to a newly formed ghetto. (See the film Schindler’s List.) Eventually, most were transported to the Belzec concentration camp. Of almost 65,000, less than 10% survived. Today, Cracow’s Jewish community is measured in the hundreds—except for the last week in June, when the area again resounds with the rich tapestry of contemporary Jewish culture. Describing the music we’ve heard is daunting. As the festival hits its midway point we’ve already heard Beyond the Pale, Veretski Pass, The SoCalled Orchestra, Maurice Medioni, Roberto Rodriguez, Theodore Bikel, Daniel Kahn and Painted Bird, Greg Wall and the Later Prophets, Frank London, Paul Brody’s Sadawi, Moguilevsky and Lerner, and more.

We’ve lapsed into speaking in superlatives. Everything seems to be the best: the audiences, the energy, the perogi. Each night seems to unbelievably top the one before. When the crowd demanded two encores from Beyond the Pale, we thought that would surely be the most energy that could be packed into the gorgeously renovated Tempel Synagogue. Two days later, the SoCalled Orchestra sparked the same thing.

Late night, in the packed basement of the Alchemia club, Jewish Music Festival alum Paul Brody leads his band and a rotating cast of festival musicians in a jam session that starts as jazz and yields to hip hop, klezmer and sheer innovation. The chairs fill before the playing begins and as it reaches fever pitch young Crakovians mix with folks old enough to be their grandparents, intimately squished into any free inch of standing room. This space is precious as combinations of artists birth moments unimaginable just days before. Only here could Bronx based freestyler C-Rayz battle Moscow native Vanya Zhok as Daniel Kahn climbs through the crowd from armrest to armrest playing his accordion. The music ends nearing 3:00am, the loyal audience satiated only by the fact that it’ll all start again the following night.

New Arkady Gendler MP3 The BREW: A monthly Music Series Co-Sponsored by the Jewish Music Festival