Formed in 1986 during the second wave of American klezmer revivalism, New York’s Klezmatics are no purists: they’ll hybridize the sound of the shtetl with rock, vintage jazz, cabaret, or any other style that suits their fancy. They reach an expansive new plateau on their most recent release, Rise Up! Shteyt Oyf! (Rounder, 2003), which is a resilient response to 9/11. The centerpiece of the album is a surprising cover of folkie Holly Near’s “I Ain’t Afraid,” a song that affirms the value of faith while condemning fundamentalist violence–“I ain’t afraid of your praying,” sings Lorin Sklamberg in the gospel-tinged chorus, “I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god....

Despite its ancient sound, this Bulgarian women’s choir is a modern creation: Philip Koutev established the Ensemble of the Bulgarian Republic in 1951, and the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir, as it’s more formally known, followed a year later. Koutev’s project was to arrange traditional Bulgarian songs, which combine Slavic, Mediterranean, Turkish, and Iraqi influences, in an ambitious modern style for a large a cappella group (presently the choir has 26 members)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Soft Circle is the current solo project of percussionist Hisham Bharoocha, perhaps better known as the cofounder and long-time drummer of Black Dice. He left that band a few years ago and seemed to take their sense of focus with him; their carefully measured excursions into abstract, swirling noise over deep, almost tribal grooves devolved into a kind of formless chaos....

“In other words, it’s among the people who’ve spent a lifetime with traditional media that we now find the largest numbers who don’t trust them. This could mean that the media have begun doing things terribly wrong. It could also mean a lot more people now dismiss out of hand media they’re unfamiliar with. When two out of five middle-aged pollees say almost nothing’s believable in the Wall Street Journal–a preposterous impression–chances are the Journal name has lost the trust of a lot of people who’ve never picked it up” [Hot Type, April 22]....

ROY BOOK BINDER 9/3, SCHUBAS This acoustic blues fingerpicker, who turns 61 in October, has seen three or four roots-music “revivals” come and go. His first tour, in 1967, was with the Reverend Gary Davis, who he’d met when he called to ask for lessons, and since then he’s befriended Pink Anderson, opened for Bonnie Raitt, appeared dozens of times on Ralph Emery’s Nashville Now TV show, and taught guitar at Jorma Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch....

Lumpen and Public Media Institute produce this annual festival, now in its fifth year, focusing on radical art, media, technology, and politics, with an emphasis on work generated by underground and activist communities. This year’s festival continues Friday, April 28, through Sunday, May 7, in Bridgeport and scattered other locations and includes neighborhood tours, workshops, numerous public art installations and interventions, barbecues, film/video screenings, music, and performances. The Free University series includes workshops, presentations, demos, and lectures....

Chicago isn’t hurting for saxophonists, yet I can’t think of a single jazz sax quartet that’s active in town. The 774th Street Quartet doesn’t quite count–bass saxophonist Thomas Mejer lives in Switzerland and altoist Aram Shelton is now based in Oakland–but it’s not a bad start. The group came together early last year and soon recorded its brand-new debut, A Rare Thing, the inaugural release from Bloody Murder Records, run by local cartoonist George Hansen....

Though local MC Antimatter Bonecrusher (Rashad Abdul-Salaam) lets his ego take the wheel from time to time, at least he knows he’s doing it. He both flaunts and devalues his education (he has a master’s in social science from the U. of C.), jokingly tosses off rhymes about his methodology (“Not to sound too modest / But I’m exhausted from formulating a theory synonymous to the atomic hypothesis”), then claims he has a 365-day male period....

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello explode in their first starring feature (1941), a musical comedy that opens with President Roosevelt signing the peacetime draft bill. As a couple of street-corner tie salesmen who unwittingly enlist in the army, the two unload their treasure chest of polished vaudeville routines, ranging from a contentious, increasingly absurd rifle drill to brain puzzlers and shortchange scams that send Costello into a rage. They’re perfectly complemented by the close-harmonizing Andrews Sisters at their peak, who entertain the troops with “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “The contrast between the deserving and undeserving poor is found in hundreds of law review articles, but the rich are not subjected to such categorization. The deserving poor are thought to be those who are married, work hard, and limit the size of their families. The poor who are unmarried, are unemployed, and need help supporting their children are considered undeserving....

No one knows the press better than superagent Danny Newman, who turns 88 next month; he’s been wrangling reporters for 74 years, promoting everyone from Sally Rand to Renee Fleming and everything from Minsky’s burlesque to the New York Philharmonic. So when he confides his frustrations with University of Illinois Press, the publisher of his new book, Tales of a Theatrical Guru, I’m pretty sure he understands that there’s no way I won’t be sharing the story....

“Welcome!” cooed a woman with big white teeth and shiny red lips. “Would you like a sticker?” She peeled a stylized American flag in a blue circle off a roll and handed it to me. “Coat check is on your left,” she chirped. These people–including members of Chicago ANSWER, the International Solidarity Movement, and Peace Pledge Chicago–have a problem with Senator Clinton’s track record since the 2002 “Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,” which about half of the Senate’s Democrats voted for, including Clinton....

Nu-‘lectro darling Matthew Dear grew up in Texas, and he moved to Detroit too late to have firsthand knowledge of the time when Motor City techno defined and refined the sound heard on dance floors around the world. But though he first got known as a microhouse artist–his 2003 full-length debut, Leave Luck to Heaven (Spectral Sound), put both him and Spectral’s parent label, Ghostly, on the map–lately he’s been pledging allegiance to ye olde techno nation....

It was bad enough that the scuffle at last month’s “Strapped in Leather” fashion ball at the New City YMCA made the papers. But then the Y’s central office used it to close the door on Michael “Skeet” Horton, one of New City’s most popular employees. “Skeet’s the heart and soul of the New City Y,” says Mark Ballogg, a volunteer who oversees its community youth baseball league. “Without Skeet, New City’s not much more than a glorified health club....

As the songwriter behind masterworks like “The Dark End of the Street” and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” Dan Penn is particularly sensitive to the struggles of R & B stars. Many of the singers he wrote for during the 60s and 70s have faded into obscurity, and classic soul hasn’t enjoyed a revival of interest the way other genres have. “Everybody says ‘What goes around comes around’ and all that ol’ good stuff,” he says....

Yakuza, Emetic, Making Ghosts, Couldron INFO 773-278-6600 or 866-468-3401 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That’s not to say Yakuza is anything but a metal band at heart. Though the songs frequently detour into evocative atmospheric passages–sometimes lush and humid, sometimes stark and barren–there’s no shortage of chugging distorted guitar or tortured, slate gray vocals. “Obviously we all have a foundation in metal,” says drummer Jim Staffel....

WEIRD WAR 4/9, EMPTY BOTTLE This Drag City project from Ian Svenonius has been hard to follow, and a little hard to care about. It started out as a sloppy, self-indulgent all-star band, then (under the name Scene Creamers) put out a second album that sounded like it was still trying to decide if it was a joke or not. But the stripped-down trio’s new If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Bite ‘Em has been worth all the waffling....

La Costa Theatre Company’s remarkably rich 90-minute revival of Jason Robert Brown’s dramatic song cycle (which premiered five years ago at Northlight) honors the innate theatricality of its 15 supple songs. Chronicling the ill-fated marriage of promising novelist Jamie and driven actress Cathy, his songs run forward from their first date to the final breakup while hers take us backward. Only in the middle do their stories converge, in the ballad “The Next Ten Minutes....

When I was in college my brother told me that Ludwig van Beethoven was partially black. He said that it was common knowledge when Beethoven was alive that he was of “Moorish” complexion and ancestry. What’s the scoop? Was he black, or–more to the point–was he pure white? –Chris Crutchfield, Saint Paul, Minnesota Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Beethoven black? Sure, why not? If we accept the “one-drop rule” that long prevailed in the U....

I saw an article the other day saying that 45 percent of the U.S. population believes that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. That would certainly explain the election results of the past few years, but I don’t believe it. A near majority of Americans simply cannot be that retarded. I looked on the Web and did find a claim that a 2004 study showed this. But it provided no cite and I haven’t been able to find any such study....