SoCalled 'Ghettoblaster' album

My God is going to kick your God's ass!!! ...that's how Socalled's new record Ghettoblaster begins. A call to arms – or really – a call away from arms, to set the tone for this thoughtful, yet ridiculous album. Religious systems are fair game, as are crazy combinations like 92-year-old lounge lizard Irving Fields (Google “Bikinis and Bongos”) and underground MC C-Rayz Walz, or James Brown trombonist Fred Wesley and a choir of Hasidic children.

So what better a way to kick off Ghettoblaster than to go on a cruise with a bunch of old Jewish people and get the prestigious National Film Board to film it?

Montreal filmmaker Garry Beitel tapped Canadian hip-hop beat maker Socalled (aka Josh Dolgin) to star in a feature length documentary based on his journey down the Dneiper River in the Ukraine, on the first ever Klezmer cruise. From Kiev to Odessa, Socalled shares his love of music and culture with the 150 other 'Klezmer enthusiasts' on the cruise in the aptly titled, “The Socalled Film.” Along the way, an additional camera crew documents the unique experience of filming on the ship on the daily updated video weblog.

Building hip-hop out of Klezmer on the open seas - top that Kanye West!

Upon completion of filming, Socalled arrives in the United States for a handful of live dates across the country. In Los Angeles, he'll be joined on stage by gospel singer Doris Glaspie, who is also featured on Ghettoblaster track “You Are Never Alone” and Wax Tailor – cinematic French hip-hop at it's best. In New York, he'll be joined by Tim Fite who puts on the best show you've ever seen ever. Other activities at the NYC show include live T-shirt silk-screening and group comic making (comic frames on the walls, lots of pens, lots of fun).

biography
Welcome to the eclectic world of master mixer, cratedigger, musical continent-spanner SoCalled, AKA Josh Dolgin. Looking beyond the usual pantheon of samples for hip hop artists, Socalled explores the shtetls of Eastern Europe and the Yiddish vaudeville stages of 2nd Avenue for inspiration.

Armed with his Akai MPC, heritage and love for genre-bending music, SoCalled is a Yiddish rapping, accordion wielding, Klezmer hip hop maestro. Heralded by Jewish, Klezmer, and hip hop musicians alike, he builds Jewish music from the bottom-up.

For his second album, Ghettoblaster reaches back into the past and mines many varying influences rich with context. The entire album is an amalgamation of traditional and contemporary influences, evoking a sound reminiscent of the past while engaging listeners of all types. "Let's Get Wet" fuses a Klezmer feel with minimal hip-hop instrumentation, while "You Are Never Alone" relays a soulful hip-hop template enriched with SoCalled's unique creative flourishes that encompass a lifetime of Jewish and hip-hop influences.

Socalled is a musician, photographer, magician and writer, born Josh Dolgin in Ottawa, Ontario and raised just north, in Chelsea, Quebec. He wrote for the local newspaper, drew cartoons, did magic shows, sang in musicals and played keys in any kind of band - salsa, gospel, rock, funk - then discovered MIDI and hip hop. He worked with rappers, he made madd beats, he snuck into studios. He graduated from McGill and made films, wrote for a magazine and produced for local hip-hop acts, while getting into singing and performing Yiddish music. When the right folks heard his sound, he was immediately engaged in production projects for films, concerts and records. SoCalled performs and records widely with a crew of mixed-up freaks and geniuses from around the world, including C Rayz Walz, Killah Priest, Matisyahu, Fred Wesley, Susan Hoffman-Watts, Frank London, and Irving Fields. His Hiphopkhasene (Piranha) won the German Critics Prize for World Music Album of the Year in 2003; his Socalled Seder (2005, JDUB) and production work with David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness! on Bubbemeises (2005, Label Bleu) also garnered critical acclaim.

"Hip hop is all about representing who you are, your crew. I'm this little white Jewish dude living in the country. It doesn't make sense for me to rap about guns, cars, and hos. I'm not going to rap about hos. What should I make music about? I should try to represent who I am. When I began digging for samples, I found these old Jewish records, and they were a clue about this funky, old tradition that had been forgotten. Yiddish theater, Cantorial music...all kinds of weird sounds…and the records had the most amazing breaks! And I realized that I could make my hip hop - my music from them." -SoCalled

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Tracklisting

SoCalled - Ghettoblaster