5.29.11
This is an Archival Site
There is now a new Rogovoy Report home
5.18.11
Weekend Preview May 19-24
Bob Dylan tributes, Deborah Voigt, Tom Paxton, Bill Kirchen, John Kirk and Trish Miller
5.18.11
Celebrating Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday in Style
Paying tribute to the greatest rock songwriter ever
5.17.11
FILM REVIEW: In a Better World and Of Gods and Men
Review by Seth Rogovoy
5.17.11
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5.12.11
Deborah Voigt Headlines Mahaiwe Gala
Opera star to sing arias, show tunes on Saturday, May 21
5.15.11
Famed Spiritual Teacher to Speak on Nonviolence
Mother Maya in free talk at Sruti Yoga in Great Barrington, Mass., on Friday May 20 at 7pm
5.12.11
Special Effects Wizard to Be Honored by Film Festival
Doug Trumbull to be Feted by BIFF
5.11.11
Weekend Preview May 12-16
Cultural Highlights of the Berkshire Weekend
6.4.09
Talk about a small world
Elaine and I grew up together, but only just recently met....
5.8.11
Berkshire Living to Cease Publication
A Farewell from Publisher Michael Zivyak
5.8.11
twiGs Branches Out
Lenox boutique launches new e-tail site
5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy
5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy
5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy
5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy
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Jewish Week quotes Rogovoy on SoCalled
11.30.06
My ‘Socalled’ Life
Klezmer-rapper Josh Dolgin — appearing at Carnegie Hall with David Krakauer — embraces both Yiddish and hip-hop.
Eric Herschthal - Editorial Assistant
During a concert at New York’s Bowery Ballroom not long ago, the klezmer-rapper Josh “Socalled” Dolgin wasn’t given much stage time. He was opening for a popular indie rock band, the Islands, and was allotted five songs to get the crowd — mostly teenagers and people in their early 20s — riled up.
Dolgin walked on stage wearing plain clothes — khakis and an untucked button-down shirt. His curly brown hair was as unruly as ever and his 1950s-style glasses fit snugly on the bridge of his nose. He looked like a nerd, a stereotype he doesn’t seem to mind.
Then, he stepped up to a small machine at the center of the stage, and did what he does best. He sampled Yiddish songs from the 1920s, repeated the catchy segments over and over again, then added a few heart-thumping beats. Moments later the backup clarinetist of his band Beyond the Pale kicked in, and Dolgin was off and running.....
At Dolgin’s perfomance at the Bowery Ballroom, it was clear the audience was having fun. But it was less clear if that was because of Dolgin’s genuine catchy tunes, or because of the oddity of them.
“Can it be funny? Yes. Is he commentating on [Jewish culture] somehow? Yes,” said Seth Rogovoy, a klezmer critic whose writing has appeared in various publications. But it is not a parody, Rogovoy contended. “A parody is like a one-joke thing. He’s finding in these old records something that may seem to be campy and kitschy, but making it speak in a whole new way. In another context it may be seen as cheesy. But what he’s doing is cool.”
Rogovoy went on: “It’s stuff that if my grandfather heard it — he was a chazan — he would have loved it.”
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