ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a third form of musical encounter, one particularly spurred by new music technologies: the encounter of contemporary musicians with the recorded Yiddish past. It also explores the discursive spaces of sample-based Yiddish music further via a close reading of Solomon and So Called's HipHopKhasene. Both Solomon and So Called came to HipHopKhasene not only as musicians involved in the klezmer scene but also as experienced creators of beat-based musics. Structured around a traditional Old World Jewish wedding ceremony, HipHopKhasene celebrates the metaphorical marriage of hip hop and klezmer music, consummated via a series of collaborative musical tracks involving a group of prominent Yiddish musicians and samples from historic Yiddish recordings. The text of HipHopKhasene's liner notes draws the listener directly into the imagined location of the wedding: the liner notes to the Piranha release of the album is simply headed Yiddishland, August 24th 2001.
