I first learned about Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars thanks (once again) to Songlines. To be precise, it was Our Ancestors Forty Thousand Years Wide which appeared on Top of the World CD back in 2006. It took me only eight years to get hold of the album. And it is one worth listening to, during the carnival or otherwise. The music is crazy. The liner notes are hilarious and as relevant now as they were then.
Carnival has power to elicit cathartic laughter in even the most constipated. Not the “Heh-heh-heh we stole the election and made billions of dollars pillaging the environment and launching an illegal war” laughter so fashionable in these times; but true Ambivalent and Universal Laughter which does not deny Complexity but affirms it. Laughter that purifies from dogmatism; liberates from fascism and pedantry, from fear and intimidation, from didacticism, naiveté and illusion, from the single meaning, from sentimentality. Laughter which Restores the Almighty Ambivalent Wholeness of our Existence.
Esteemed reader, you have purchased the greatest recording of all time, a CD so powerful that it will cure you of all ailments from impotence to flatulence. Let my bowels be ripped out and roasted if I am exaggerating. Simply carrying this disc on your person will lead to untold fortunes! Wrap this compact disc in warm, moist linen and apply it directly to any afflicted area of your body. It has the strength to cure Toothache, Ulcer and STDs. Is this nothing? Find me any Klezmer recording which possesses such virtues and properties! It relegates to the dung heap of history all the other Radical-Jewish-Soul-Music-Brave-Old-Klezmotic-Golemic-Conservatory-Kaplyen-MadAsYahoo-Klezwhatever recordings, surpassing even Beethoven, Bird and Beatles. If anyone contradicts me, let her be herewith denounced as a false prophet, a Jew for Cheeses, a seducer of the people. Of all the recordings made by Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars, this is the Third!
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