Mokum

To celebrate their 15th anniversary, the Amsterdam Klezmer Band wanted to release a special album that would offer a retrospective of its long and successful career but would also demonstrate where they are today. So they decided to make a live recording of 16 of their own ‘greatest hits’ in front of a select audience of friends and relatives in Amsterdam’s renowned Studio 150.

The resulting album is aptly entitled Mokum, which is not only the Yiddish word for city (derived from the Hebrew ‘Makkom, which means place), but also a slang name for Amsterdam, considered by many to be an honorary title, since the city has a long tradition of welcoming refugees and other strangers. Making the album the way they did turned out to be a brilliant move, as Mokum shows the AKB doing what they do best: delivering a killer live performance that bedazzles even the most sophisticated audience. By its very nature Mokum sounds more traditional and straightforward than recent studio efforts, such as Katla and Zaraza. But since the AKB never settle for mere danceability, there’s a level of sophistication to these pieces that allows for repeated listening at home.