Product Description The story of Wonder Wheel is a glorious tale of happenstance and discovery, populated by luminaries from different worlds and different eras. In the pantheon: American folk icon Woody Guthrie and world music superstars the Klezmatics, Woodys daughter, Nora Guthrie, maestro Itzhak Perlmanwhose chance meeting with Nora helped plant the seed for the project, Celtic vocalist Susan McKeown, and producers GoodandEvil (Sex Mob, Elysian Fields, Felix Da Housecat). These Coney Island-wrought lyrics add a less-known urban dimension to a man seen as the avatar of dust- bowl ballads. But, like thousands of his songs, they were left unrecorded, their music forgotten. The result, seven years in the making, is Wonder Wheela record Nora describes as "Just as my father would have wanted." The album reflects Woodys political stance and social agenda into a larger, global mirror, and brings a 20th century American figurehead to a 21st-century audience. Woodys lyricsset to music thats filled with Eastern European, klezmer, Latin, Celtic, Afro-Caribbean and folk flavorstake on a universal life of their own. As GoodandEvils Danny Blume notes, the music is "an intense combination of the familiar and the exotic. But above all, its completely natural, all-encompassing, and intensely human." Amazon.com At first glance, the wedding of newly discovered lyrics by Okie folk legend Woody Guthrie to melodies by the Klezmatics--a band that blends the sounds and images of Yiddish culture with world music and American traditions--seems incongruous, at best. But there is method in the madness of executive producer and Woody's daughter, Nora Guthrie. In the 1940s, the Guthries family lived in the heavily Jewish borough of Brooklyn, where their visitors included not only such activist pals as Pete Seeger, but Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt--Guthrie's mother-in-law--who shared his devotion to message and idealism. The troubadour's dusted-off words, particularly on "Mermaid Avenue," show his constant awareness and appreciation of Jewish culture, as well as his predictable fixation with the fleetingness of life in a time of war ("Pass Away," "Goin' Away to Sea"). Yet there is a new gentleness and renewed love of poetry in many of these pieces, especially in the closing song, "Heaven," which reflects Guthrie's continuing social consciousness, i.e., labor struggles and the homeless. The Klezmatics, on their first English-language album, push Woody's folkie form into the 21st century, with melodies built around Middle Eastern or Slavic frameworks--put to best use on the delicate lullaby "Heddy Down" and the affirming "Wheel of Life." --Alanna Nash About the Artist The Klezmatics play soul-stirring Jewish roots music for our time, recreating klezmer in arrangements and compositions that combine Jewish identity and mysticism with a contemporary zeitgeist and a postmodern aesthetic. Since their founding in New York City's East Village in 1986, the Klezmatics have celebrated the ecstatic nature of Yiddish music with works which are by turns wild, spiritual, provocative, reflective and danceable. The vitality and joy of the Klezmatics' music has uplifted audiences around the world since their inception. They've reached millions of television viewers on PBS GREAT PERFORMANCES (with Itzhak Perlman), LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS NIGHTWATCH, FOX AFTER BREAKFAST, the BBC's RHYTHMS OF THE WORLD and MTV NEWS. The band provided composed music for Judith Helfand's documentary A HEALTHY BABY GIRL which was broadcast on the PBS television series P.O.V., while talk show host Rosie O'Donnell's TV special KIDS ARE PUNNY combined an original Klezmatics cartoon score with the voice of comedian Jackie Mason. For radio they have recorded sessions for the BBC's JOHN PEEL SHOW and regular guests on National Public Radio's NEW SOUNDS LIVE, SOUNDCHECK and A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION with Garrison Keillor. They performed their score for the PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATRE'S recent work, "Davenen," which premiered to capacity audiences at Washington, DC's Kennedy Center and continues to be presented internationally. In the summer of 2001 the band, together with Israeli singer Chava Alberstein and Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary), appeared in concert on the site of Berlin's historic New Synagogue. The resulting television program, VOICES: A MUSICAL CELEBRATION, aired nationally over PBS, across Europe and in Israel. See more
