Who Was Essad Bey?

This is a very entertaining and intriguing album. Whole books have been written about Essad Bey. He was born Lev Nussimbaum, a Russian Jew who grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan. Come the 1917 revolution, he fled to Berlin where he converted to Islam, called himself Essad Bey and became a successful author, even after the Nazis came to power. In 1937, under another pseudonym, Kurban Said, he published Ali and Nino, a dramatic love story set in Baku that became a bestseller and is his one claim to fame. This album is about his story.

A Russian musician living in Berlin, Yuriy Gurzhy (of RotFront and Russendisko) became fascinated by Essad Bey and wrote a musical about him for the city's Gorki Theater with Daniel Kahn (of The Painted Bird) and Marina Frenk (Marina & Kapelsky). The style, appropriately enough, draws on Weimar Republic cabaret with the cosmopolitan twist of accordion, guitars and piano: think Kurt Weill with swing. Lyrics switch between English, German and Russian and there is, overall, an abiding freewheeling sense of mischief and fun.