DANIEL KAHN
Expat troubadour, songwriter, translator, and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Kahn was born in Detroit in 1978 and raised in Michigan. His music combines English, Yiddish, German and other languages in a radical mix of klezmer, lyrical folk ballads, dark cabaret, and political punk. His projects and groups include the award-winning cult band The Painted Bird, as well as Brothers Nazaroff, Semer Ensemble, The Unternationale, Bulat Blues, The Disorientalists, his duo with Jake Shulman-Ment, "The Building & Other Songs," and a forthcoming trio album with Shulman-Ment and Christian Dawid "Umru." A graduate of YIVO's 2008 Weinreich Summer Program, he teaches and appears regularly at many international Yiddish culture festivals and workshops. He played the original Perchik in Folksbiene's hit "Fidler afn Dakh," Yosl in "Amerike," Biff in NYR's "Death of a Salesman," the Badkhn in the Netflix series "Unorthodox," and was featured in Carnegie Hall's "From Shtetl to Stage." He works frequently as composer, actor, and director at Hamburg's Thalia and Berlin's Gorki Theater and co-founded the Shtetl Berlin festival. Videos of his Yiddish versions of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Tom Waits songs have received millions of views. Ashkenaz Foundation named him the inaugural Theo Bikel Artist-in-Residence. In 2018, he received the Chane and Joseph Mlotek Award for Yiddish Continuity and in 2023 he was honored with the Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award. After being based in Berlin for 16 years, he currently harbors in Hamburg with Yeva Lapsker and their son.
“Kahn’s great and artful songwriting follows in the footsteps of Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits”- DPA
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“While many artists in Klezmer (and folk music generally) are concerned with preserving the past, Daniel Kahn seems determined to bend it to his will. . .Without exaggeration, it’s some of the best songwriting I’ve ever come across.” -Jon Patton, Driftwood Magazine.
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“Spotlighted on the stage and dressed in black, Kahn sang through a megaphone and switched between accordion, piano and ukelele as he chewed up stereotypes and spit them out in an almost in-your-face challenge to the audience.” -Ruth Ellen Gruber, Ruthless Cosmopolitan
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“Everyone’s bouncing and drinking and Kahn sings of revolution, whisky and Zion, inner emigration and parasitism. He ends with the Yiddish folk song ‘Dem Milners Trern,’ known from the Coen brothers film ‘A Serious Man.’ Daniel Kahn, at once moralist and anarchist, is also a man who means it all seriously.'” -Maik Brüggemeyer, Rolling Stone [German] (live concert review)
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“He’s like the Jewish Bob Dylan!”-a real old lady at a concert