Nisht Azoy (Not Like This) built dramatically on Black Ox’s debut (Ver Tanzt?), striking a similar balance between vocal and instrumental tunes, but with more intensity, mystery, and a readiness to stretch things out, whether in the incantatory opener “Bukharian” or the clomping crescendos of “Az Vey Dem Tatn” and “Tsvey Tabelakh”. Never relying on museum-piece reverence or an obvious, forced collision of musical forms, Black Ox rewrote a Yiddish songbook in ways that sound organically anchored to tradition without being suffocated by it. With backgrounds in folk, punk-rock and free jazz, the group’s four musicians distilled Balkan, Central Asian, Arabic and Slavic sources into a coherent, impassioned sound that gave teeth to old Jewish songs. The second record by Montreal’s Black Ox Orkestar placed the group at the forefront of a ‘new Jewish music’ that rejected contemporary fusion and musty nostalgia in equal measure.
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