Jewish spiritual, Latino-Jewish hip hop music featured at RPU

Cornell Hillel, in conjunction with Hillel at Ithaca College, presents Kodesh Ve'Chol: Jewish Jams, Sacred and Profane on Saturday, March 1, from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. the following morning.

The combination concert of Jewish mystical music, with the London/Sklamberg/Schwimmer Trio, and Jewish-Latino dance party, with the rap collective Hip Hop Hoodios, takes place in the Robert Purcell Community Center Multi-Purpose Room on Cornell's North Campus. Admission is $10 for non-students, $5 for students. Children under 12 are admitted free. Tickets can be purchased at the Willard Straight Hall ticket office and Cornell Hillel, G34 Anabel Taylor Hall.

The London/Sklamberg/Schwimmer Trio has performed its concert of Jewish spiritual music -- nigunim, or traditional melodies, and zmiros, or songs for shabbat -- to audiences around the world. From festivals of sacred music in France and Germany to world music festivals in California and Europe to Jewish venues, audiences have been transported by the music, which is, in turn, contemplative and ecstatic. The trio worked in conjunction with the Bronfman Center at New York University to create the new bencher/zmiros songbook Ayn Sof. Their music can be heard on two celebrated recordings: "Nigunim" (Tzadik Records) and the Grammy-nominated "The Zmiros Project" (Traditional Crossroads). Two trio members, Frank London and Lorin Sklamberg, are founding members of the Klezmatics, a world-renowned group of klezmer musicians and performers.

Cornell alumnus Josh Norek '97, whose stage name is Josue Noriega, is the lead singer with Latin-Jewish rap group Hip Hop Hoodios ("hoodios" is a rap-conscious spelling of "judios," the Spanish word for Jews). The group is best known for its over-the-top humor (a Hanukkah video of "Ocho Kandelikas" as a reggae-punk-hip hop song featured dancing girls in bagel-shaped bras) as well as its Latino "sabor" and rap audacity. Two rap tracks by the group, "Raza Hoodia" and "Havana Nagila," were recently among the top 10 most downloaded Latin tracks on MP3.com. The Hoodios have been interviewed on National Public Radio and written about in the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. For more on the group, see the Web site: <www.hoodios.com>.

In addition, London and Sklamberg will lead a series of pre-concert workshops Friday and Saturday at Ithaca College -- klezmer master classes in the School of Music and singing sessions as part of Ithaca College Hillel's community Shabbat celebration, co-sponsored by the college's Jewish studies program. The Cornell and Ithaca communities are invited to take part. For more information, contact Aron Gutman at 274-7001 or e-mail agutman@ithaca.edu.