Yale Strom & Hot Pstromi - Borsht with Bread, Brothers/Klezmer

Yale Strom is a mainstay in the circuits of klezmer music, but perhaps not as well known as the "new school" as it were (The Klezmatics, Hasidic New Wave, etc). While he's been around for a while and has a musical history of note, his release on Naxos a few years prior (Café Jew Zoo) is probably his best-known album. Here, there's a collection of music collected largely from non-Jews. Traveling through the Eastern bloc in the 1980s and '90s, Strom spent a good deal of time collecting songs from the Rom musicians who once played alongside Jewish klezmer musicians: musical co-workers largely separated by the Holocaust (on a related note there are at least a few Rom songs kept alive by Jewish musicians under the same circumstances -- Strom collects both, but this album focuses on the former). Read More