Dirty Magnets
Badchen, pakn treger and downtown Jazz icon Anthony Coleman is following up his other albums on John Zorn’s Tzadik/Radical Jewish Culture label with a live cut from Krakow, Poland, Shmutsige Magnaten, celebrating the Yiddish composer Mordechai Gebirtig. Gebirtig, himself born in Krakow in 1877, is noted for his song “Es Brent” (It’s Burning), which was written in response to a 1936 pogrom. Gebirtig was shot in the Krakow Ghetto in June 1942. None of his close family survived the war. Anthony Coleman’s new album is to be an amulet, evoking the tunes that refire and illuminate Gebirtig and his contemporaries for a new generation of fans. The album will be released on February 21st.
Is there a studio version previously?
DK,
A studio version of the upcoming CD by Coleman is not available. However, Coleman has recorded a bunch of albums with varying themes, Jewish and non-Jewish. I recommend Sephardic Tinge and I Could Have Been a Drum. The only Gebirtig album I know of on CD is called “Krakow Ghetto Notebook” which likely contains some of the same songs as the up Coleman album. But to answer your question, no, as far as I know, there is no studio verson of Shmutsige Magnaten.