Mazel Tov Cocktail Party: Take an ounce of hip hop, dash of polka, then square dance

Mazel Tov Cocktail¹ Party: Take an ounce of hip² hop³, dash of polka, then square dance

Transcript⁴

Clarinetist David Krakauer and pianist Kathleen Tagg were thrilled when they were invited to a chamber⁶ music retreat in rural upstate New York during the early months of the pandemic. It was an opportunity to flee their cramped⁷ Manhattan apartment and live for two weeks on a farm in the Adirondack Mountains near the Canadian border.

The couple arrived in early June 2020 but ended up staying three months, prompting their host Angela Brown to jokingly refer to them as "the squatters." Brown is the director of Hill and Hollow Music and, it turns out, an avid⁵ folk dancer. Little did she know that by introducing Krakauer and Tagg to the local folk dance scene, she had a major influence on their new musical project, pointing it in an unexpected direction.

"One of the things that I was missing and that I complained about was that the dances had all been canceled," Brown recalled. "I think they were kind of fascinated that a thriving dance culture exists here in the Adirondacks."

"When we were up in the north country in that atmosphere the seeds got planted in our head," said Krakauer. "This is very interesting. There is this little doorway⁸ here."

Brown does English Country Dancing to hornpipe, which is both a dance and music form that originated in the British Isles⁹ and dates back to the 16th Century. She played CDs of hornpipe music for Krakauer and Tagg.

During their stay in the north country, Krakauer and Tagg started writing music based on recognizable dance forms, including a square dance, a polka, a Jewish hora, a calypso and, of course, hornpipe. That music comprises the debut¹⁰ album of Mazel Tov Cocktail Party, their new band. It's his hope, Krakauer said, that the music itself conveys the need for "empathy and a deeper understanding of the other."

Tagg describes Mazel Tov Cocktail Party as a very diverse band, and she and Krakauer "invite people to come as they are."

"We're not asking them to be something they're not," she said. "We're not going to try and make a square dance that sounds like we are inside a square dance ourselves because we're not."

An Unexpected Band With A Mean Funk Guitar

The standout track on the new album is "North Country Square Dance," whose lyrics¹¹ are rapped and manage to sound like instructions for an actual square dance. Much of the music video is old black and white archival film of people clogging¹².

"We hope that people will grab that track and make up some new square dances," said Krakauer, who is considered a virtuoso¹³ in klezmer, jazz and classical music.

He first burst onto the klezmer scene as a member of the Grammy Award-winning band The Klezmatics. His former bandmate Frank London, who has combined klezmer with numerous forms of world music, considers Krakauer one of the greatest clarinet players on the planet.

"When you hear David, you know it's him pretty quickly," London told NPR.

Mazel Tov Cocktail Party is reminiscent of another multi-racial band Krakauer founded, Abraham, Inc., which mixes klezmer, funk and hip-hop. Mazel Tov Cocktail Party's bassist, Jerome Harris, has performed with Abraham, Inc., as has its vocalist, Sarah MK, a Black French-Canadian soul singer and rapper. She wrote the lyrics for the band's c alypso track, an homage¹⁴ to Harry¹⁵ Belafonte. In addition to Krakauer and Tagg, the band includes percussionist¹⁶ Martin Shamoonpour, an Iranian immigrant, and Yoshie Fruchter, an Orthodox Jew who plays a mean funk guitar.

Krakauer's klezmer-infused clarinet playing is the musical thread that runs through these dance-inspired tunes¹⁷. Combining klezmer with other ethnic¹⁸ dance music has a long history, says London of The Klezmatics.

"Klezmer musicians have always played a mixture of so-called Jewish particular dances like the bulgar or the sher, and co-territorial dances, the polka-mazurkas and waltzes and all these other dances of our neighbors. That's part of the tradition," London said.

After several months of working remotely, the band members met one another in the flesh and performed together for the first time in the Adirondacks last summer. Harris was eager to rehearse with Shamoonpour, who plays a Middle Eastern frame drum known as a daf.

"As a rhythm section player, you want to get a feel for your rhythm section colleagues and you do that by playing together and hearing how each of you is approaching the music and responding to each other," Harris explained. "When we finally all got together, it was really quite a rich musical homecoming."

The first performance took place at a marina parking lot in Plattsburgh, NY with much of the audience in their cars. The following day the band played at Hill and Hollow Music's farm, where Angela Brown reports, "Even the chickens were dancing!"

In late March the band's New York City debut took place in a boxing gym a day before leaving on its European tour. The band gelled in Europe, according to Tagg, where it played large auditoriums¹⁹ as well as small clubs. Audiences were up on their feet and dancing "from the first note," said Tagg.

1 cocktail   

n.鸡尾酒；餐前开胃小吃；混合物

参考例句：

• We invited some foreign friends for a cocktail party.我们邀请了一些外国朋友参加鸡尾酒会。
• At a cocktail party in Hollywood,I was introduced to Charlie Chaplin.在好莱坞的一次鸡尾酒会上，人家把我介绍给查理·卓别林。

2 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

3 hop   

n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过

参考例句：

• The children had a competition to see who could hop the fastest.孩子们举行比赛，看谁单足跳跃最快。
• How long can you hop on your right foot?你用右脚能跳多远？

4 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

5 avid   

adj.热心的；贪婪的；渴望的；劲头十足的

参考例句：

• He is rich,but he is still avid of more money.他很富有,但他还想贪图更多的钱。
• She was avid for praise from her coach.那女孩渴望得到教练的称赞。

6 chamber   

n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所

参考例句：

• For many,the dentist's surgery remains a torture chamber.对许多人来说，牙医的治疗室一直是间受刑室。
• The chamber was ablaze with light.会议厅里灯火辉煌。

7 cramped   

a.狭窄的

参考例句：

• The house was terribly small and cramped, but the agent described it as a bijou residence. 房子十分狭小拥挤，但经纪人却把它说成是小巧别致的住宅。
• working in cramped conditions 在拥挤的环境里工作

8 doorway   

n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径

参考例句：

• They huddled in the shop doorway to shelter from the rain.他们挤在商店门口躲雨。
• Mary suddenly appeared in the doorway.玛丽突然出现在门口。

9 isles   

岛( isle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• the geology of the British Isles 不列颠群岛的地质
• The boat left for the isles. 小船驶向那些小岛。

10 debut   

n.首次演出，初次露面

参考例句：

• That same year he made his Broadway debut, playing a suave radio journalist.在那同一年里，他初次在百老汇登台，扮演一个温文而雅的电台记者。
• The actress made her debut in the new comedy.这位演员在那出新喜剧中首次登台演出。

11 lyrics   

n.歌词

参考例句：

• music and lyrics by Rodgers and Hart 由罗杰斯和哈特作词作曲
• The book contains lyrics and guitar tablatures for over 100 songs. 这本书有100多首歌的歌词和吉他奏法谱。

12 clogging   

堵塞，闭合

参考例句：

• This process suffers mainly from clogging the membrane. 这种过程的主要问题是滤膜的堵塞。
• And you know that eyewitness that's been clogging up the airwaves? 你知道那个充斥着电视广播的目击证人？

13 virtuoso   

n.精于某种艺术或乐器的专家，行家里手

参考例句：

• He was gaining a reputation as a remarkable virtuoso.作为一位技艺非凡的大师，他声誉日隆。
• His father was a virtuoso horn player who belonged to the court orchestra.他的父亲是宫廷乐队中一个技巧精湛的圆号演奏家。

14 homage   

n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬

参考例句：

• We pay homage to the genius of Shakespeare.我们对莎士比亚的天才表示敬仰。
• The soldiers swore to pay their homage to the Queen.士兵们宣誓效忠于女王陛下。

15 harry   

vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼

参考例句：

• Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天，人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
• Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。

16 percussionist   

n.打击乐器演奏者

参考例句：

• She overcame her deafness and eventually became a successful percussionist. 她克服了耳聋的毛病，最后当了打击乐队敲打手。 来自辞典例句
• For many years I practiced these techniques as a professional percussionist in jazz and new music. 许多年来作为一个职业的爵士乐和新音乐演奏者我不断实践着。 来自互联网

17 tunes   

n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调

参考例句：

• a potpourri of tunes 乐曲集锦
• When things get a bit too much, she simply tunes out temporarily. 碰到事情太棘手时，她干脆暂时撒手不管。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 ethnic   

adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的

参考例句：

• This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
• The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。

19 auditoriums   

n.观众席( auditorium的名词复数 )；听众席；礼堂；会堂

参考例句：

• The walls and ceilings of contemporary auditoriums usually conceal light, sound, and air-conditioning equipment. 当代观众厅的墙壁和天花板常设灯光、音响以及空调设备。 来自互联网
• The interior follows an exceedingly compact plan of different types and sizes of rooms and auditoriums. 在室内装饰方面，不同类型不同尺寸的空间以及观众席都追寻一种极端简洁的装饰风格。 来自互联网