JDub Records

JTA broke the news this week that Brazilian Vice President Jose Alencar signed a measure setting March 18 as “Jewish Immigration Day,” a day to honor all Jews who migrated to the country. The date was strategically chosen, as it coincides with the re-inauguration date in 2002 of the Brazilian synagogue Kahal Zur Israel, the very first Jewish synagogue in the Americas. They synagogue was founded in 1636 in Recife, Brazil during a short dutch rule in the Northeastern corner of Brazil. Although, built in 1732, the Mikve Israel-Emanuel synagogue in Curaçao is the oldest synagogue in the Americas still in use.

Alencar signed the measure on December 17, and then lit Chanukah candles with the local Jewish community. The ceremony in Brasilia was attended by several Jewish officials, including Israeli Ambassador Giora Becher and Israel’s Honorary Consul in Rio de Janeiro Osias Wurman.

Fun Fact: Brazil has the 2nd largest Jewish population in South America of 120,000, only less than Argentina.

And for those that don’t know, Brazil also has one of the richest music scenes in the world, here are a few of my favorite Brazilian jams  for your enjoyment.

Gilberto Gil - Aquele Abraco Download

Os Mutantes -Bat Macumba Download

Caetano Veloso - Lost in the Paradise Download

Bonus: Cibelle ft. Devendra Banhart - London, London Download

DeLeon is back in NYC after 20 cities and 8000 miles with the magnificent Brazilian band Os Mutantes.  As is our custom, we like to share a short video at the end of each tour to give you a peak at what life on the road is like.  This time around, in honor of the pared down set we were performing, we shot ourselves playing a simpler version of our song “Almond Trees” in various locales around the country.  Plus, our new friends in Os Mutantes joined in too!

I’m sitting backstage at the Culture Room in Ft. Lauderdale, the sounds of Os Mutantes bouncing off the walls.  I think I mentioned in a previous post how grateful and excited we are to be touring with a band whose music we cherish so dearly.  Well the feeling lingers.  I would never have the gall to compare us to Mutantes, but the gracious comparison has come up more than once in reviews of DeLeon so I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that people are hearing.  I think the answer may lie in the word “mutant” itself.

Very early on in DeLeon’s time line a prominent Sephardic music scholar asked me if I thought our music was authentic.  I told him that he’s the scholar so I’ll leave such classifications for him to sort out.  We play these traditional songs with the utmost sincerity and respect but authenticity is a more nuanced term.  Well, having seen Os Mutantes a dozen times this month and having time to talk to Sergio and the other members about their music and inspirations I’ve come to realize that on this tour we are all mutants.  We come from a place, and we love the place that we come from, but at some point we started changing.  Our chromosomal makeup mutated as a result of our environments and fighting such an organic evolution would be unnatural.

In a way this fundamental commonality has created an air of brotherhood backstage and after hours on this tour.  Whether romping in the pool after our show in Tampa (patio furniture in tow…ssh..) with our tour mates or trading banjo licks for flamenco strums with Mutantes member Vitor there has been a mutual mutant affection and understanding.

A couple days ago Sergio was telling me what a strange and wonderful trip this has been and how he is already nostalgic about it.  That means a lot coming from a man who has been a part of so much, and we just feel lucky to be a part of it.   Well folks, it ain’t over yet.  We got a week to go and we’re going to enjoy every minute of it.  Hope to see you out there…

Someone in Florida really loves DeLeon, because there’s a very nice preview of the band’s upcoming show in Ft. Lauderdale in Miami New Times today.  An excerpt, with the full text below the cut:

“When a newly reformed legendary Brazilian psychedelic band calls upon you to open up for its national tour, it’s probably best to simply say yes. Of course, leave it to those wacky Os Mutantes to go ahead and dig up the only group that describes their sound as “Spanish-Jewish indie rockers” to be that opener.”

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DeLeon’s In Studio Podcast @ The National Post 10/2/09

DeLeon is playing Toronto TONIGHT with Os Mutantes, but they had some time while in town to stop into The National Post’s office to do a performance podcast for their site.  Listen as the band chats with online arts editor Brad Frenette about their music, JDub and whether or not there is such a thing as too-many-instruments for a 3 person band!  Check it.

We’re a few shows into a dream month on the road with Os Mutantes.  The shows have been great, and Mutantes have been absolutely lovely to hang out with.  Watching Sergio disassemble his many knobbed guitar, and being able to pick his brain on working with Tom Ze (who co-wrote much of their new album,) have been a couple highlights of our downtime back stage so far.

Another highlight came on Yom Kippur, which we had off in between stops in Chicago and Detroit.  Amy’s grandmother lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana and they hadn’t seen each other in too long so we decided to take the minor detour and pay her a visit.  It could have been easy enough to kick back and enjoy the warmth of a grandma’s house but I made the effort to seek out a shul in Fort Wayne in which to atone for my year’s many sins.  I ended up finding Congregation Achduth Vesholom, the oldest congregation in Indiana.  The service was familiar enough, but something about being so far from home and in a part of the country I don’t associate with the tribe  made the experience more potent than usual.

Being on the road in the Midwest one passes a lot of the same ‘ol.  Arby’s, McD’s, Gas Stations, Arby’s, Wendy’s and miles of corn in between.  So when we show up to a place like Omaha and find that there are lovers of psychedelic tropicalia from 30 years ago, and lovers of Sephardic Rock from today it feels like a community of like minded souls have found each other .  And now to find that in Fort Wayne, Indiana there are a group of Jews singing the same songs I’d be singing back home in Brooklyn on Yom Kippur expands that feeling even more.  I’m glad I went, not just to better my chances of being inscribed in the book of life but because now it’ll be easier to picture the small groups of Jews coming together to repent around the world on the High Holy Days, an image which gives me pride.

After services I went back to Grandma Crawford’s house to break the fast with a classic Midwestern meal, replete with a Jello salad appetizer.

After seeing them open for Os Mutantes in Denver, Adam Rovner of The Forward wrote quite the complimentary article about DeLeon’s Sephardic musical stylings.  You can read the entire thing HERE.  If not, here’s an excerpt with full text under the cut.

No one strums more sexuality from a banjo than Dan Saks. And no one squeezes more soul out of a Glockenspiel than Amy Crawford. The duo, two-fifths of Brooklyn-based alt-Sephardi indie band DeLeon, flew through an energetic set on September 24, the gig that started their 18 nights opening for Tropicália psych-rockers Os Mutantes.

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Today DeLeon left to begin their big fall tour with Os Mutantes.  We’ll be giving you lots of updates from their adventure, and they’ll be blogging too!  Do you have twitter?  Follow them for real-time news @ilovedeleon!  Until then, here are all the dates.  Catch DeLeon in your town!

As any touring band can tell you, between the glorious nightly romps there are generally long stretches of asphalt.  This video is a montage of some of the car games that got us through the 5000 miles we drove during a two week tour with Gogol Bordello download strange wilderness movie this summer.  See how many games you can identify, and then let us know your favorite car games so we can be ready for our month long tour (with Os Mutantes!) later this month.

Jay over at The Faster Times posted a really insightful piece on the upcoming Os Mutantes/DeLeon tour.  Check it out!  My favorite excerpt below:

“Going on the road with the newly reformed Brazilian group is another band who stretch out the traditional ideas of rock into a whole different realm. Upon first reading their press release that states the band “plays 15th Century Spanish indie rock infused with the deeply mysterious and entrancing cadences of the ancient Sephardic tradition”, I seriously thought to myself that this could possibly be Mel Brooks attempt at making a modern comedy set in the Lower East Side or Williamsburg. When I finally checked out the bands debut album that came out last year on JDub, I was somewhat shocked at how a band employing a Jewish language that is currently spoken even less than Yiddish could put out music that doesn’t rely on the kitsch factor alone. DeLeon, whose use of the Judaeo-Spanish language known as Ladino, adds an interesting twist to their colorful take on current indie music, and much like their autumn tour mates, it bears very little resemblance to the contemporaries of their time and place.“