THE Klezmatics
WE WERE MADE FOR THESE TIMES
Shamus Records of TRO Essex Music Group
OUT MAY 1
CONTACT:
LYDIA KRUMPER // PUBLICIST
AVA KELLY // PUBLICIST
Drawing from protest songwriters such as Woody Guthrie, Holly Near, Dovid Edelstadt, and Chaim Zhitlovsky, We Were Made For These Times addresses migration, labor, war, belonging, and collective responsibility. Its title track, inspired by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times, carries the album’s central affirmation: do not lose heart, we were made for these times.
Joining The Klezmatics on the album are Argentine vocalist Sofía Rei, gospel powerhouse Joshua Nelson, the pioneering Lavender Light Gospel Choir, Crimean Tatar guitar virtuoso Enver İzmaylov, jazz visionaries William Parker and James Brandon Lewis, Janis Siegel of The Manhattan Transfer, and the Colombian percussion collective La Manga. Together, they create a sound that moves fluidly between Yiddish song, Black gospel, Latin American rhythms, avant-garde jazz, and diasporic memory.
The visual language is integral to the project. The album artwork adopts a bold protest-poster aesthetic inspired by hand-carved linocuts, centered around symbolic hand gestures — reaching, resisting, blessing, building. Each single extends this visual vocabulary, creating a cohesive body of work where image and music reinforce one another. The result is not only a recording, but a unified artistic statement.
Released globally on May 1, International Workers’ Day, the album affirms what The Klezmatics have embodied for four decades: that music can protest, comfort, unite, and still insist on joy. For their whole career, The Klezmatics have stood at the forefront of global roots music, transforming klezmer from a preserved tradition into a fearless contemporary language. Emerging from New York City’s East Village in 1986, they fused Yiddish song with punk energy, gospel intensity, jazz improvisation, and global rhythms, creating music that is joyful, defiant, and profoundly human.
They remain the only klezmer band ever to win a Grammy Award, earning Best Contemporary World Music Album for Wonder Wheel - Lyrics by Woody Guthrie, produced by Danny Blume. Over the years, they have released thirteen acclaimed recordings and toured five continents, performing at major halls and festivals including Town Hall, Disney Hall, Carnegie Hall, WOMAD, Colours of Ostrava, Pohoda, Yiddish Summer Weimar, Central Park SummerStage, Pirineos Sur, and Yidstock.
Their work has crossed into theater, film, dance, and television, from Tony Kushner’s A Dybbuk and the Pilobolus Dance Theatre to PBS Great Performances and HBO’s Sex and the City. Millions have encountered their ecstatic live energy through NPR broadcasts and widely shared sessions such as KEXP, WWOZ, and NPR’s Tiny Desk.
As they enter their fifth decade, The Klezmatics continue to push the genre forward while honoring its roots. Their music channels rhythm, justice, humor, and spiritual fire, insisting that tradition is not about preservation, but participation.