This week, after placing an order at the end of September, I received my vinyl copy of “Klezmer Klezmer Klezmer,” the live recording of this concert. Hide your valuables, we’re pirates!” Stratton shouts ahead of “Araber Tantz,” a tune that he says is his favorite from the repertoire of 1990s klezmer revival music. “We’re pirates! We’re pirates! We’re here, we’re confident. Remarkable players, just not what I thought I got myself into lol) #brettmccutcheon #vulfpeck #vulfpeckcovers #yiddish #music #funk #snarkypuppy #jazz #fusion #drums #musician ♬ original sound - Brett McCutcheon Some Vulfpeck fans trekked out to Ohio, expecting to see the full band and their funk, and instead found Stratton in a march on a two-piece drum kit, Winograd sliding clarinet melodies, and Dolgin syncopating on a baby grand piano. Jack Stratton is the son of Bert Stratton, who plays clarinet, harmonica and saxophone for the Cleveland-based klezmer group Yiddishe Cup. In a 2016 Bandcamp blog post, writer Allegra Rosenberg wrote about Vulfpeck’s Jewish roots, and how the tummler (comic entertainer) persona that Stratton adopts on stage straddles the band’s music in an Ashkenazi-Jewish space between past and present. I didn’t understand it at the time, but Winograd’s serenade revealed to me a Yiddishkeit infused in the band’s catalog that I could only see in hindsight. I was about a year and a half out of college, emotionally distanced from both my cultural and religious Judaism, and excited to see the low-volume funk band with a cult following that I had tried to emulate in my own basement rock. Now at this point in my life, I was not yet the engagement editor at one of the most-storied Yiddish newspapers in United States history. I was in attendance in nosebleed seats, and as the show began, klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd took the stage to lull the raucous crowd with a solo evocative of the shtetl called “ The Sweet Science,” as Vulfpeck’s frontman Jack Stratton literally crawled onto the largest stage the band had ever taken. In 2019, the Michigan-based indie funk band Vulfpeck sold out Madison Square Garden for a one-night-only show.
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