Here's my rave: "Les Yeux Noirs," a Paris-based world music band who have a new recording, "Tchorba" on the World Village label and who performed last Thursday night at UCLA's Royce Hall as part of UCLA LIVE.
"Les Yeux Noir" are a six person band led by brothers Olivier and Eric Slabiak, violinists and vocalists who combine klezmer and gypsy music in unique combinations and sing songs in French, Russian, Rumanian and Yiddish.
The band's name which means "the black eyes" in French, comes from the famous Russian song Ochi Chorna (which also means black eyes) performed by Django Reinhardt. The reference is to gypsies - but in French, the language that gave us nuance, one can also detect an allusion to "les pied noirs" (the black feet), which is how the French referred to the North African immigrants of the 1960s.
Olivier Slabiak told me that he and his brother formed the band about twelve years ago. At the time, young French musicians were discovering hip-hop and making it their own, exploring their own musical roots and creating new music forms.
Oliver and Eric Slabiak are second generation Parisians. Their grandparents were born in Poland and spoke a private language with them and their parents that, as a young child, Eric imagined was theirs alone. Years later he learned that language had a name: Yiddish.
Although Eric and Olivier were classically trained violinsts who won prizes at the Brussels Royal conservatory, they quit their studies to form their band. Thursday night they played songs fast and slow, joyous an elegiac, Yiddish lullabies and wild musical jams, and even a song that puts lyrics to Baudelaire's poem, "Le Voyage" which Eric Slabiak introduced saying: "Enjoy your trip."
When listening to Eric and Olivier Slabiak the word that comes to mind is "virtuoso." The two play in a way that provokes awe - The Charlie Daniels band would be impressed -- I have no doubt they could take on the Devil. They can play faster than fast yet have the facility to be wildly playful or deeply serious .They are the Hendrix of the violin - they don't take themselves too seriously but manage to infuse each song with emotion. It is hard to sit still when listening to the infectious beats they create.
At the UCLA Live event, "Les Yeux Noirs" opened for Chava Alberstein who is often described as "the Joan Baez of Israel" -meaning that she is a singer-songwriter who writes intimate love songs, as well as being a social activist who writes songs of protest and peace. But over the last decade Alberstein has been on something of a voyage herself. Albertstein immigrated with her Yiddish speaking parents to Israel from Poland when she was 6. In 1998 She released an album of Yiddish songs called "The Well," several of which she performed.
As I sat in the audience at Royce Hall, it seemed amazing that these two artists, one led by brothers raised as the grandchildren of immigrants in France, a country known for its cultural pride; the other, herself an immigrant to Israel - home of Modern Hebrew; would both be composing new music for Yiddish song and performing those songs in Los Angeles. It reminds me of advice someone once gave me: if you want to learn a language that's spoken anywhere in the world - don't learn French or Spanish - learn Yiddish.