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Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: Klezmer fans and Deadheads: How Ashkenaz Festival is merging musical styles this summer
Description: This interview originally aired on Culturally Jewish_, The CJN's podcast covering Canadian Jewish arts and culture. Hear the full episode and subscribe at thecjn.ca/culture._
There’s a certain type of Jew, usually Ashkenazi, sometimes Israeli, with a mop of curly hair, an acousitc guitar and an affinity for marijuana, who will inevitably love bands like The Grateful Dead and Phish. Those groups are collectively known as “jam bands”, which play lengthy, musically complex songs, often in concert, always with a hefty reliance on improvisation.
Once synonymous with psychedelic drugs, the jam band scene has go...