Full Review of "Deep Inside: New Jewish Music"

Nomi Kaston, Calgary, Alberta,
The Canadian Folk Music BULLETIN
de musique folklorique canadienne, Summer 2001

Welcome Back Yiddish! And welcome back Lenka Lichtenberg! It's hard to believe, while listening to Lenka's celebration of everything Jewish, from Klezmer-backed Yiddish traditionals to the contemporary sadnesses that divide us, that she grew up in what she calls "an entirely assimilated survivor family, a true blank page in the anything-Jewish-sense".

Lenka's process of filling in that blank page and constructing her own Jewish identity makes an entertaining and important contribution to modern Jewish culture. She has shared the process with enthusiastic audiences at Toronto's Ashkenaz festivals, and now presents it in her masterful and richly varied CD, Deep Inside. The fully traditional Klezmer sound bursts through not only in Lenka's revivals of good old Yiddish riddle songs such as "Tum-Balalaike", but also in her own creations, notably "Old Jewish Soul", where Daniel Hoffman's soulful violin weeps a painfully joyous parallel to Lenka's soprano. The song ends in manic, almost wedding-like, Klezmer glory. That close proximity of anguish and joy is ever so Jewish.

In "Welcome Back Yiddish", Martin Van de Ven's clarinet echoes Lenka's voice deliciously as she brings back the yababababams and the chirichiribims of the Yiddish language we had almost forgotten. Lenka does well with other Jewish styles also, bringing a lovely Sephardi lilt to the rhythms of "Los Bilbilicos" and a jazzy improvisational style to some of her own compositions.

Lenka Lichtenberg addresses some of the important issues in her songs, regarding the sad lack of communication between observant and liberal Jews, and the heavy responsibility to keep Holocaust memories alive. She treats these issues with buoyant, melodic hope.

Lenka and her fabulous musical team, with Ken Whiteley's exuberant production values, have mapped Lenka Lichtenberg's return to the joys, and the tears and the ageless rhythms of Jewish music, in a way that all of us can share in. Deep Inside is energizing proof that Jewish tradition is durable enough to take jazzy new steps into the contemporary music scene.

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