Socalled

The Ottawa Citizen
02 November, 2005
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/

Hip hop, oy vey!

Josh Dolgin merges urban rhyme with traditional klezmer, and it's a whole new sound, writes Caitlin Crockard.

It sounds like a gimmick at first, like something dreamed up on paper that won't quite work in execution.

The song and album titles are a clue; The Jew Funk, Hip Hop Khasene, The Socalled Seder. Josh Dolgin, a.k.a. Socalled, makes hip hop klezmer. And until you hear the music, you'll just have to trust him that the two styles are a natural fit.

"It's almost like they made (klezmer) 80 years ago," Dolgin says from his home in Montreal, "hoping that someday people might be able to do something with it, you know what I mean?"

Dolgin himself didn't know, at first. He grew up Jewish in Ottawa and nearby Chelsea, but klezmer had no part in his childhood.

"I always played in these bands around Ottawa," he says. "Weird bands -- salsa, gospel, funk." Dolgin played piano and accordion and took part in musicals. And then, while studying at McGill University, hip hop sparked his imagination. It was while searching for old records to sample that he found his backdoor into Jewish folk.

"Hip hop is all about the break, like the little moment where everything breaks down except for one little funky thing that happens. And you're always looking for these things to sample. Just by accident, I'm looking at this Yiddish theatre record -- this guy Aaron Lebedeff -- and every song, between the verses, has that break, has this wicked little melody that you're looking for all day. The whole album was full of them."

Not only did it suggest a new hybrid, but the record also reconnected Dolgin with his culture in a way that felt comfortable: "The fact that it was Jewish made it feel, for me, less like I was stealing, and more like I was rediscovering and sharing this sound that nobody really knows about."

The first song to come from this new discovery was The Jew Funk, which is most notable for its goofy take on a Jewish blessing ("Baruch ata Adonai, Motherf---a!"). But Dolgin isn't out to parody his culture, nor to just slap some beats on tradition. For his first record, The Socalled Seder, Dolgin invited guests ranging from Wu-Tang Clan member Killah Priest to clarinetist David Krakauer. Over top of the contributions, Dolgin inserts deftly mixed samples of traditional folk. It's instantly catchy, but the layers of meaning in the lyrics and samples give it depth. More recently, Dolgin collaborated with British violinist Sophie Solomon on a reworking of wedding songs, Hip Hop Khasene. The more adventurous musicians in the klezmer scene, such as Solomon and Krakauer, have embraced Dolgin's efforts to push the music forward. But Dolgin is just as comfortable playing it straight-up.

"When I started to learn these songs and listen to these records," Dolgin says, "I started wanting to just sing the songs."

He sings in Toronto folk-gypsy-klezmer group Beyond the Pale, who are acting as a backing band for his current tour. He has also directed the Addath Israel Choir for High Holidays, and participates in Jewish folk festivals. It was hip hop that brought him here, but Dolgin can now trace the roots like a traditionalist.

"These people started rediscovering the music from the '20s and '30s -- and older, of course -- and started playing it again," Dolgin says, explaining the '70s klezmer revival.

"Then there was a second wave of the revival, which is like the Klezmatics. They came in and started working and making it a little bit more hip and contemporary.

"Now everybody knows the word klezmer, at least. But it became sort of a bad word, almost. You think of these people with vests and hats, playing this dorky music."

Dolgin's blend is smoothing out as his music matures. His interest in live music has meant more of a reliance on a band and less of a cut-up sound. A new record called Ghettoblaster, edited in Ottawa with Phil Bova Jr., will come out next year.

"This hybrid I'm trying to make," Dolgin says, "This is finally the best example of it."

Which is not to say that the surface absurdity of the hybrid doesn't still peek through sometimes. Alongside contributions by beat-makers like Gonzales, Ghettoblaster features octogenarian actor and singer Theodore Bikel on vocals.

The thought of the distinguished Bikel combined with hip hop clearly delights Dolgin.

"He sings over phat beats!" Dolgin exclaims. "I think he'll like it. Just the fact that he did it is cool."

And the effort might help spark the next revival of klezmer.

"It's been always sort of insular for Jews and stuff, but I think there's a new world of world music now, like where gypsy music is hip. But the revival that already happened, it didn't take it all the way somehow. ... There's never been a popular klezmer song, has there?"

Maybe not so far, but Socalled is working on it.