Read below for a chance to win tickets to Balkan’s shows in New York and Philadelphia.

With their roots firmly planted all around the Mediterranean rim and their solid rock and reggae foundations,” Balkan Beat Box is one of those international sensations that can perform to any crowd and feel like they’re at home. This band is all about mixing it up, “transcending categories (pop, electronic dance music, world, rock) by creating a new breed of 21st century music, deeply connected to their folk upbringing yet forward-thinking, which appeals to audiences across the geographical and stylistic borders.”

Two of the founders of Balkan have even just released a new album called SHOTNEZ, out on JDub Digital. Shotnez follows the tradition of Balkan Beat Box with its raw, unadorned sound. They’ve got one foot in the swamp and the other in the desert; an international trash rock collective garnering influence from the Red Sea to the Mississippi Delta.

The SHOTNEZ sound is a hybridization of multiple musical genres– but few know what “shatnez” actually means. In Jewish law, “shatnez” is the prohibition of wearing a fabric containing both wool and linen. So what does this have to do with tickets to see Balkan Beat Box?

No, we weren’t just stringing you along or trying to get you to read the Torah. Here’s the catch– JDub is so proud of SHOTNEZ, they want to get you in to see Balkan’s shows in NYC and Philadelphia. For a chance to win a pair of tickets to the show of your choice, listen to SHOTNEZ here and create your own ILLEGAL HYBRID! Really, just comment in the comments section below with your best idea for an illegal “shatnez” mixture of one song off Shotnez and another from wherever you want.

Be sure to mention which of the two cities you’re in and we’ll select our favorite “mix!” Winners will be decided by 6PM the night before the concert in their city!

4/26
Balkan Beat Box in NYC
Webster Hall
8PM

4/28
BBB in Philadelphia
Trocadero Theater
8PM

The post Want To Win Some Balkan Beat Box Tickets? appeared first on Jewcy.

We all remember the most awesome concerts or festivals we’ve ever been to (unless they were awesome for alcohol-induced reasons), but when you’re a band on a ten, twenty, hundred-city tour, what becomes memorable for you? What makes a stage in New York different from a stage in LA? Chicago? Portland? While grabbing coffee with Jeremiah Lockwood of  The Sway Machinery, I found the first of many answers to my question. We were talking about his band’s newest album, The House of Friendly Ghosts, Vol. 1, which the group recorded while in Africa for Mali’s “Festival of the Desert:” as it turns out, the greatest (or most awful) memories can also be made for bands after their amps have been unplugged.

Can you give a bit of background? What were you doing “the night of?”

We were playing at Ywah Michelle, this outdoor club that was situated on the Niger River. It was kind of like a juke joint, nothing fancy, but Mangala Camara was playing there. Mangala was a very famous singer in Mali. One of his songs was the theme song for the re-election campaign of the president of Mali. He passed away last November, ten months after this story took place… Anyway, getting to the club was an ordeal in and of itself. We drove around for almost an hour with the cab driver trying to figure out how to get there. Finally we were dropped off by the side of the road in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. There were no lights, no signs, no noise. We walked a few steps deeper into the darkness and came upon this enormous walled compound that overlooked the river, where we finally heard the music of Mangala.”

So after the performance, you got into another cab to head back home …

And we hit a police checkpoint. They told the cab drivers to pull over. We couldn’t understand a thing. We were all a bit nervous, but I felt confidant that our friend Ibrahim, who had brought us out to the club, would be able to handle the situation… That didn’t prove to be true. It was really unclear how much trouble we were actually in.

What was everyone’s immediate reaction when you were first pulled over? What did you think was going to happen?

Well what happened was that it was after a certain hour, and after that hour you were supposed to carry identity papers. We didn’t originally know this, and besides, it didn’t seem like a good idea to be running around the Malian countryside with our passports in our pockets…

So you were brought to the police station…

The checkpoint was actually right by the police station– they walked us in. Actually, the “station” was a concrete block with a corrugated tin roof. Outside there were a few men sitting around a trash can bonfire playing video games. We sat in there for quite a while until help came.

What? Did they just refuse to let you go? You didn’t try to pay them off?

At first, our friend and translator Ibrahim tried to persuade the police officers to let us go because we were “very important,” international artists visiting Mali. That didn’t work. I think they basically didn’t know what to do with us.

That’s especially scary, because who knows how long they could have held you there without “knowing what to do!” How did you eventually get out?

Ibrahim called the owner of the club, Michelle. She came with her boyfriend, who was a tall, imposing army officer.  Michelle was still attired in the gorgeous robe, covered in intricate gold designs that she wore as hostess of her nightclub. She and her boyfriend were a formidable sight entering the little decrepit box of a police station. He said two words to the officers and we were immediately released.
What happened after you were released? Was that the end of the story?

Well the funny thing is that we were almost immediately stopped at another police checkpoint. This time Stuart Bogie took some money from his pocket and gave it to the police officer and we were released right away!

The post Bands On The Run: The Sway Machinery Go To Jail In Mali appeared first on Jewcy.

I’m picturing a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. His muscles are gleaming from a newly re-touched spray tan. Of course, he is wearing a Speedo: how else would one show off their muscles to the fullest extent? Young Arnold Schwarzenegger is in a Speedo, flexing, glinting in the sunlight with every turn. He’s on my front porch (should I have mentioned that first?) He’s on my front porch and chalky white vitamins are raining down on him from a pill container that hovers overhead. Arnold Schwarzenegger is bathing in beautiful white pills on my front porch and…

“Yeah,” says the voice over the phone. “Yeah, so, exactly, to remind yourself that you want to take home the vitamins on your desk, you want to make them bigger, stranger, more colorful than just a bottle of vitamins. You’ve got to create an image that sticks.” The voice prompting me to commit these foul mind-crimes at work is Joshua Foer, who I’ve called to interview about his new book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (Penguin, 2011).

“Did you choose that title because it’s so visual in itself?” I ask. “Of course!” he replies, “that’s the whole point! It’s supposed to be a memorable title. It’s hard to picture Einstein moonwalking with a diamond glove and penny loafers. THAT image should just stick!” I tell him I was actually picturing Einstein bouncing around on the surface of the moon, but… “Well shit,” exclaims Foer, “you’re the second person to say that! I guess Michael Jackson occupies a strange piece of my subconscious, because I grew up in the 80s and watched too much TV.”

Michael Jackson moon-walking, Bill Clinton copulating with a basketball, Dom DeLuise hula-hooping, these images only partially explain how Joshua Foer, just two years out of college, spent mostly a few minutes in the morning “training” his memory for one year yet managed to win the 2006 U.S. Memory Championship. His path to that win lays the groundwork for Moonwalking with Einstein, a book as much about Foer’s own experience as it is about “the subject and science of memory, and our culture’s changing relationship to it throughout history.”

“Originally, I had gone to the U.S.  Memory Championship to write an article,” explains Foer, “and ended up getting sucked in to this strange world of people who get together and try to remember lots of random stuff– who use ancient memory techniques, and are trying to resurrect an old way of thinking about memory.”

In Moonwalking with Einstein, Foer explains that our intellectual capacities today are no different from men living in the fifth century B.C. What is different is the way in which we use (or don’t use) our memories. We have a lot more to remember these days—one of the reasons why we rely so heavily on books, cameras, the internet… Unfortunately, in relying on these crutches, we may be missing out on vital real-life experiences or knowledge that we might one day need.

Foer’s journey brings him into contact with savants like “Rain Man” Kim Peek, college professors studying skill acquisition, survivors of diseases that have all but destroyed their abilities to remember almost anything, and a cast of characters (mostly men), “widely varying in both age and hygienic upkeep,” whose aim is “to rescue a long-lost tradition of memory training that had disappeared centuries ago” with the advent of writing, the printing press, and now, Google search.

“Our memories are indeed improvable, within limits” writes Foer, and the skills of those “memory champions” competing for national and international titles “can indeed be tapped within all of us.” It is “simply a matter of learning to ‘think in more memorable ways’ using the ‘extraordinarily simple’ 2,500-year-old mnemonic technique known as the ‘memory palace.’”
It was thanks to this technique that Arnold Schwarzenegger ended up on my doorstep, bathing in One-a-Day Women’s vitamins. The “memory palace,” explains Foer, is a place in one’s mind where images can be stored along a route, through a house or a neighborhood, for instance, with each image corresponding to something you are trying to memorize. The lewder, funnier, and more ridiculous the image, the easier it sticks.

So has he written a self-help book? A how-to guide for “remembering everything?” Can students across the country all achieve IQs worthy of MENSA? While “one of the teachers I write about uses memory techniques in his history classes, and his kids all do incredibly well on the Regents Exams,” says Foer, “memory is about a whole lot more than names and dates. We structure our experience of time around our memories. One of the lessons I’ve drawn is that it’s really important to just pay attention.”

Of course, names, dates and numbers are what got him the title of 2006 U.S. Memory Champion, after beating out his competitors by memorizing long series of random digits, playing cards in random order, etc. So with all of this training, does he always remember every item on his grocery list? “No…” admits Foer, but it’s “awareness that is ultimately at the root of all memory. What I hope anyone would take away from this Moonwalking with Einstein is to make an effort to have memorable experiences. It’s the memorable experiences that stick.” Like that time I discussed an almost-nude, glistening Arnold, with a married writer, over the phone, while in my boss’s office… at work? Maybe that’s one to try to forget.

The post How Joshua Foer Remembers Everything appeared first on Jewcy.

You may recognize Soulico as the DJ crew behind Exotic on the Speaker, which brought together an astonishing array of talent, featuring Ghostface Killah, Del Tha Funkee Homosapian, Lyrics Born and Rye Rye.

In the words of The Washington Post, Soulico rocks “dizzying sets that command you to dance.” On stage and off, Soulico’s main goal is to create a musical experience. Balkan Beat Box (BBB), founded by Israeli-born ex-pats Ori Kaplan (ex-Gogol Bordello) and Tamir Muskat (ex-Firewater), feel the same way, having built their reputation on explosive live shows with Tomer Yosef as frontman –his wild onstage energy galvanizing live audiences the world over.

Soulico and Balkan Beat Box are teaming up for their first US tour in over a year, and Jewcy wants YOU to be at their first show!

Our favorite part of Soulico’s live shows is the crazy energy they bring to the stage, especially our man DJ Eyal Rob, who is always trying to hype the crowd. You can see one of his signature moves in the video below, which mixes energizer bunny enthusiasm and an invisible trampoline.

We decided that Rob needs a name for this signature move, so we’ve made up a contest!

Two winners will receive a pair of tickets each to see Soulico and Balkan’s live show at The Conga Room in LA on Wednesday, February 23rd. Here’s how to participate:

Make up a name that you think best describes DJ Rob’s signature move.

Post it in the comments section below this post.

Jewcy will announce the winner here at noon on Tuesday. If your entry is selected we will email you notification with specific instructions on how to get your tickets. Now start the party preparations!

The post Win Tickets to See Soulico with Balkan Beat Box and Ceci Bastida in LA! appeared first on Jewcy.

At least once a month on Monday morning, Talisha Harrison (aka Tali Adina) wakes up at 7AM, leaves her house, and heads for her local JCC. “I go inside up the stairs to the chapel, get a prayer book off the shelf and take out my tallit” she explains on her blog, Tali Adina’s Days of Future Past, “I say the blessing and wrap it around me; I’m now ready for the minyan service to begin.”

Tali plays an active role in the Jewish community of her Florida hometown, attending minyan because “Not only do you connect with G-D at minyan, you also connect with others in your congregation and community… it’s essential that you participate. Without your participation, the community wouldn’t be complete.”

Reading these words, it is surprising, startling even, to scroll down just two entries later and find, in big purple lettering, the headline “I am a starving writer who has a social phobia.” In opposition to her eloquent descriptions of minyan and religious community, Tali is blunt about her life as an outsider. “I am the only young Jew of color in my area, as far as I know… I’m a starving writer who’s socially phobic with a mixture of anxiety, a little anti-social and a little depression and Graves Disease-hypothyroidism mixed in.”

Interestingly enough, it was this life as the “other” that afforded Tali the opportunity to build a new, international community in the form of Kehila, an online magazine for Jews of color around the world. Unemployed and also sick, she wondered how to fill the extra time: “I thought- what could I do that would include writing (which I have loved since I was little), and doing something to tell people how I felt, because I do blog, and so I thought… a magazine! There isn’t as far as I know, another magazine for Jews of color. Just to have some sort of community connection, since we’re all in different states, all over the place…”

As it turned out, Tali was not the only one feeling like an outsider in her own community. Just three issues in, she has a small but supportive base of readers who log in to read Kehila from Alaska, Maryland, and even Israel. Miriam, a Jew of color from Tsfat, writes “I like [Kehila] because it’s a magazine about Jews of color and the topic is not about racism only!” It seems like an easy trap to fall in to—but because Tali is a self-described outsider in so many ways, she is actually the perfect person to create a wholly inclusive magazine. Who better than a young, female, Jew of color, suffering from a rare disease, searching for work, interested in food and fashion, battling social anxieties, to produce an online magazine with something for everyone?

“We are a minority within a minority whose community is growing and requires more outlets in the Jewish and non-Jewish world to express, share, educate, discuss, debate, and voice the many opinions, topics, and issues that are important to us. I hope that this magazine will be such an outlet,” writes Adina. Feedback already reflects Tali’s goals: “I like that it blends Jewish women’s issues with practical life issues (like how to buy clothes on a budget!)” writes reader Solange Hansen. “In the future I’d like to see her explore issues of mixed marriages, and maybe feature some congregations (Reform, Conservative and Orthodox) that have diverse memberships.  Maybe some traditional recipes from African American homes that have been altered to be Kosher or in-line with other dietary laws would be good too.”

In her last, Hanukkah-themed issue, Tali featured a piece written by Erika Davis, a guest writer who is also an “Ohio transplant, living in NYC… currently in the process of converting to Judaism. Her blog, ‘Black, Gay and Jewish’ charts her progress, insights, thoughts, frustrations, and joy of Jewish learning.” The article was about how, if at all, the couple would be celebrating Christmas that year and forever after. After fighting with her girlfriend over whether presents would be exchanged, Davis finally realizes: “I forgot that what I want and expect and need from my Jewish religion is not what she needs, wants, or expects from her Jewish identity.”

Kehila is a magazine which highlights this idea exactly—we all want, expect, and need something different out of Judaism, yet we are all still Jews. We celebrate the same holidays, we know how to pronounce “yarmulke.” Shais “MaNishtana” Rison, an influential blogger who writes about his experiences as a Jew of color on http://manishatana.net, has already pointed his readers in Kehila’s direction: “I appreciate… the fact that there is a publication out there that–while clear that it is written from the perspective of a Jew of Color– is still mindful of the fact that we are all Jews and can be so without having to be apologetic of our being different ethnically…”

We are all different, but we are all Jewish, and Kehila is about building a community, not just a readership. For her upcoming issue, Tali asked for photo submissions from Hanukkah—one woman submitted pictures from her wedding. She maintains a yartzeit and mishabeirach column, and a community section where wedding and bar mitzvah announcements can be made. There is a lot of space left to fill, and a number of the magazine’s articles are pulled from internet news and information sites, but Tali continues to write, organize, and network every day.

On Kehila’s website, Tali posted a “Hot Topic,” or “Something to Ponder” for her second, Hanukkah-themed issue. “Each of us, according to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, is a living Chanukah candle capable of spreading our own inner light… Like that little jar of oil which burned longer than anyone thought reasonable, we can live more brightly than we often imagine, even under the most difficult of circumstances.” Meant to inspire others, one can’t help but see her repeating this mantra to herself. For a “socially phobic” starving writer, she spends a surprising amount of time keeping other people spiritually full.

For now you can read Kehila online only at http://kehilamagazine.web.officelive.com/default.aspx until it gets off its feet!

The post Kehila: A Magazine For Jews Of Color appeared first on Jewcy.

Joanna Perl of Perl Girl Baking uses the immortal words of Linda Richman as the mantra for her new company: out to make “The World’s Best Rugalach (Really),” her treats melt in your mouth, “like buttah.”

Perl Girl Baking was officially launched in January, but Perl comes from a long line of bakers…sorta.  “I started off as my mother’s sous chef,” explains Perl: “I spent my childhood eating home-baked cookies, brownies, pecan bars that my mom churned out daily. She thought store-brought products were gross and didn’t want us eating margarine. When the world was falling for margarine, Splenda and Snackwells, mom was faithful to what she loved: butter, eggs, dark chocolate and real sugar. The way for my mom to be secure about what we were eating was to make it herself.”

Perl comes from a long line of bakers, going back generations on both sides of her family. “Our father’s family had owned Jewish bakeries in Hungary before the war. My grandfather was a baker- not by trade, just by hobby. He had never set foot in the kitchen but when he retired… he found this insane passion for baking; oreos, truffles, he was obsessed with Jacques Pépin and the French chefs, and took over the kitchen in his final years.”

Truffles aren’t exactly kin to rugalach, and a tiny oven is no Cordon Bleu test kitchen, but Perl is positive about her future: “I had an order for 300 people the other day, and pretty much turned into my own personal sweatshop. It was fun! You get into a rhythm.” With an oven that holds only 36 pieces of this savory desert at a time, it’s hard to believe she could stay so upbeat, but Perl practically sings the Song of Songs about her baking business throughout our interview. “I’ll wake up at 3 AM every day to make rugalach, if that’s what it takes.”

Now this writer knows from personal experience that certain older Jews, (of the 97 year old son of immigrants variety who wraps his coin collection in tissues and doesn’t eat vegetables because green food is for the birds) might look at Perl Girl’s seven varieties of rugalach and think- Peanut Butter and Jelly flavor?! That’s not REAL rugalach, but Perl is confident with the direction her business is moving. Her varieties include a more traditional cinnamon sugar and currant variety, as well as apricot, raspberry chocolate (her favorite), and fig and almond. The market is definitely open for Perl Girl Baking—we’ve never tasted such buttery, delicious rugalach in our lives—and she’s ready to take it.

The post Does Perl Girl Baking Really Make The World’s Best Rugalach? appeared first on Jewcy.