Queen Kong 'Fray'
Jazz and klezmer have had a covert relationship dating to the 1920 as Jewish immigrant musicians found work in American bands. The conversation is explicit on Queen Kong’s debut, Fray. Citing John Zorn as inspiration for moving Jewish culture into evolving contexts, the ensemble makes an elegant statement on joining together two disparate traditions into something organic, upholding the essence of both.
With Fray, the melancholy joy of Eastern European Jewish music takes on the fluid rhythms and improvisational direction of jazz. Some of the instrumentation is unorthodox in klezmer or unusual in jazz. Cello is heard on three tracks and sousaphone holds up the bottom throughout. The klezmer fusion assumes several forms. “If/Then” sounds like cool jazz from the shtetl. “Kaddish for Jonny” could be Miles Davis’ Sketches of Sefarad if such as a thing could be imagined. And Queen Kong gets quirky-funky on “East 3rd and C” in a wailing Hasidic house party.
