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Saul Kaye - News & Reviews

Jewish musician has strong kinship with African

The Tucson Jewish Film Festival heads into its second weekend, adding a live performance by the Saul Kaye Jewish Blues Band to highlight the TJFF Chai 18th Anniversary & Bar Mitzvah Party! That exclamation point is an official part of the title, to emphasize the exuberance of this occasion.

Kaye is a career blues and jazz musician with six solo CDs on his résumé. Last year he recorded a 12-song album of Jewish blues and began spreading the word coast to coast. His intent is to give biblical figures from the Old Testament and the Torah a new voice, often presented in secular settings.

Born in South Africa, Kaye traveled with his parents to their new home in central California. As a kid he was drawn to the blues through late night radio. In his early teen years Kaye began playing guitar in blues jams, later attended Berklee College and then nurtured his blues love in northern California.

"At the Tucson JCC we'll be playing some of the more high-energy tunes from the album ("Jewish Blues"), but please make two things clear about the show: it is not klezmer music and I'm not proselytizing. I don't have an agenda."

Kaye always felt a symbiotic bond with the African blues tradition coming from the history of slavery in America.

"Jews have been enslaved in many countries over the centuries, including Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Rome, Greece, Germany and Malta," Kaye explains. "So, like the African slave experience proved to be a catalyst for blues, so the path of Jewish history fostered its own form of soulful tears."

Given the volatile situation in Israel right now, Kaye also believes it is important "to take these stories out of the political agenda and put them into the home, among families where they belong."

That would include a concert setting, as well, for Kaye's experience as an entertainer in both secular and Jewish surroundings has been equally positive. He believes in the power of people going out to hear the music, to experience it while feeling they are part of a singular community

"In a Jewish setting, people are really listening to the words," he says. "In a more secular setting, they are listening to the groove."

The Chai 18th Anniversary & Bar Mitzvah Party! begins with a special screening of the 2008 family comedy "Sixty Six." British actors Helena Bonham Carter and Eddie Marsan are cast as the parents of 12-year-old Bernie (Gregg Sulkin), whose bar mitzvah falls on the same day as the final match of the 1966 World Cup.

After the movie comes a special dessert reception, pizza and dance party with the Saul Kaye Jewish Blues Band.

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