Event

Abraham Inc. featuring David Krakauer, Fred Wesley, and Socalled

Tuesday, March 2, 2010, at 7:30pm | Tryon Festival Theatre

The klezmer king, a funk pioneer, and the smoothest Yiddish-rapping mix master around—that’s Abraham Inc., an uncommon collaboration of the internationally acclaimed clarinetist David Krakauer, jazz trombonist Fred Wesley, and Canadian-born beat architect Socalled (aka Josh Dolgin). Since the 1990s, Krakauer has delved into his Eastern European Jewish roots by improvising, composing, and breaking down the conventional confines of klezmer. Klezmer Madness!, the first incarnation of that exploration, “hurl[ed] the tradition of klezmer music into the rock era” (The New York Times). Socalled served as pianist and accordion player for the group, and by 2005, he and Krakauer were stirring up klezmer with hip hop and funk and dreaming of taking it further with Wesley.

To their delight, Wesley, best known as James Brown’s musical director and as part of George Clinton’s Parliament Funkadelic, and six more musicians—among them Bronx emcee/freestyler C-Rayz Walz—joined the group. Audiences and the press alike quickly embraced the intriguing combo. JazzTimes loved “the enthusiastic crowd—young and old, Jews and gentiles, whites and blacks—dancing ecstatically in the aisles like it was a Jewish wedding,” and Krakauer himself describes this bag of endless surprises as “a band where Jews make ‘phat beats’ and African-Americans play music from Yidl’ Mitn’ Fidl’. Jews play funky lines and African Americans sing Hebraic chant. This is a band whose members interact with the highest level of mutual respect and understanding for each other’s musicality, humanity, intelligence and rich cultural background. This is a group of highly unique individuals who come together and delight in each other’s diversity. That’s what Abraham Inc. is all about.”



Patron Co-sponsor:
Anonymous

Corporate Silver Sponsors:
Central Illinois' CW
Fox 27 WCCU-TV
Illini Studio, Jon and Patricia Dessen

Supported by the Performing Arts Fund, a program of Arts Midwest funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art, with additional contributions from the Illinois Arts Council, the General Mills Foundation, and the Land O’Lakes Foundation