The Sway Machinery

The braying horns run wild at first, but soon get tamed and yoked into towing the plodding guitar, which trembles like a long tracking shot in a Jim Jarmusch film. The singing begins, and unless you were raised with a healthy (and possibly heaping) dose of Judaism, these are not lyrics you understand, yet they fold you into the ritualistic rhythms, soaring brass lines, and guttural voice of Jeremiah Lockwood, mastermind behind the Sway Machinery. Lockwood's arrangements of Jewish cantorial songs whip up a frenzy wherein all the world's music can do that which music does best: celebrate. Arrangements of Yiddish, Aramaic, and Hebrew lyrics mesh with Antibalas horns and American rock 'n' roll blues thick with call-and-response field hollers. Such joyful synthesis is what music is all about, not to mention what New York is all about. So it's no surprise that Lockwood, a born-and-raised Gotham denizen, embraces such a melting-pot perspective. "It's about the subcurrent of all folk music," he says. "The ability to find identity in mythological places, not political places."

Lockwood grew up regaled and schooled by the songs of his grandfather, the renowned cantor Jacob Konigsberg. The young prodigy was steeped in music that demanded an individual voice willing to submit to a grander purpose that transcends the individual—the Sway Machinery apply the same rubric. What the band's players share most in common is not religion, however, but the passion for channeling emotions and ideas that would otherwise go unheard. Drummer and Sway Machinery co-founder Tomer Tzur sits steadily behind the drum kit, sharing rhythm section duty with Colin Stetson on bass saxophone, not bass guitar. Stuart Bogie and Jordan McLean (on tenor sax and trumpet, respectively) round out the band—together, the quintet tells ancient stories ranging from meditative and snaking to madcap and bone-rattling.

Lockwood’s earliest musical endeavors—street musician gigs playing Southern blues on subway platforms—were an extension of all those hours he spent absorbing his grandfather’s records. The Sway Machinery thrive on that same energy of tradition translated, an absolutely vital variation that’s inventive but no less reverent. The result is buoyant, evocative, and incredibly physical—songs that combine styles with seemingly nothing in common toward the aim of celebrating everything we do have in common. Namely, the language of song, even if the words themselves don’t make much sense.

Buzz Poole - The Village Voice - The Village Voice

The very name of The Sway Machinery, a Brooklyn-based cantorial-infused supergroup, brings to mind the conjunction of the natural and the created, the human and the machine, and the group’s music rejoices in that paradox.

The musicians, coming from relatively mainstream bands, here align themselves with the primeval drive to dance and with its sublime manifestation as transcendental shuckling (swaying). This not the stiff, traditional hazanut of your fathers and grandfathers, nor is it the increasingly common polite avant-garde jazz/klezmer fusion. Sway Machinery’s sound pulses with barely controlled movement.

Frontman and guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood (also of Balkan Beat Box) described to the Forward how The Sway Machinery’s first album, “Hidden Melodies Revealed” (released April 7), is profoundly wild, with layered brass employing unique sources — even the sounds of imagined prehistoric animals. The braying, interlocking trumpets that kick off such tracks as “Intro,” “Anim Zemiros” and “A Staff of Strength” (among others) suggest a marching band or an elephant parade gone berserk, and hearing the choral crowds chant in the epic crescendo of “Adiray Ayuma” reminds one less of a High Holy Day congregation responding to its cantor than — again in Lockwood’s words — “of a triumphant army brigade emerging from a tunnel.”

To simply call the group’s sound, as many reviewers have, an eclectic blend of klezmer, blues, indie-folk, Afro-pop and hazanut does The Sway Machinery no justice. True: The group’s sound is certainly not free of the influence of these historically and culturally familiar genres. Indeed, The Sway Machinery’s composition is as diverse, primal and epic as its sound. But with the deep woolly mammoth bellows of bass saxophonist Colin Stetson (of Arcade Fire); the brassy, blaring, and sharp tones of tenor saxophonist Stuart Bogie and trumpeter Jordan McLean (both of Antibalas); the dramatically raucous jazz beats of drummer Brian Chase (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and Lockwood’s mildly raspy but mostly grandiose voice over his understated but critically centered arpeggiated guitar, this all-star lineup attempts a new genre of post-cantorial music with a flair that transcends even the sum of its independently talented parts, achieving a musically fresh visionary space that celebrates both the primal and the sublime.

I hadn’t heard of The Sway Machinery until last September. An Israeli friend of mine had been visiting New York City for the month and had recommended we meet up at the Millinery Center Synagogue on Sixth Avenue at about midnight on a Thursday. To those unfamiliar with the contemporary post-Hasidic bohemian scene, this may seem like a strange place and time for a licit rendezvous. But for those in the know, the Millinery Center Synagogue informally hosts a weekly gathering affectionately known as “The Chulent.” This gathering attracts a smorgasbord of traditional, neo and post-Hasidic Jews, as well as anyone interested in vegetarian chulent, the occasional Torah lecture or folk concert, and general night-long rabble rousing and merrymaking.

When we arrived, we saw chulent-eaters with and without yarmulkes, sidelocks, frocks, piercings and colored hair, spread out in what was becoming a crowded space. Some had spilled out onto the already crowded porch area for a cigarette break; others retreated to some of the more hidden rooms in the back for what seemed like a more aromatic convention. It was only after midnight that The Sway Machinery took the stage, and although I hadn’t anticipated a performance by the band that night, I was transfixed as the musicians played into the early morning.

After the performance, Lockwood described the experience of playing The Chulent as surreal, dreamy and of incredible personal importance. Watching men and women who had either shed or retained their full Hasidic garb excitedly sway and jump to the words of familiar liturgies and melodies — High Holy Day and otherwise — and to the sounds of the brass- and blues-suffused but lofty cantorial-driven rhythms, almost as if they were at a tish (gathering) around their fathers’ and grandfathers’ rebbe, was reason to rejoice. I was similarly startled by the band’s strikingly fresh-but-familiar sound, driven into the rhythms struck by Lockwood’s entrancing guitar and sharp hazanlike voice, and by the accompanying bleating horns. And that’s when I realized: The Sway Machinery posits a grand and ambitious vision. This is the cantorial music of our generation: It is the rhythm and accompaniment to which we would set our traditional melodies, had we the tools and vision Lockwood and his Sway Machinery possess.

That night, The Sway Machinery’s stage presence and voice transcended even the traditional roots the band claims as their base: At times, Lockwood interjected the swinging cantorial favorites with a mystical, nasal and preacherlike voice, telling original and home-spun folktales reminiscent of those midrashic or Hasidic. At other points, he seemed to get lost in a Robert Plant-like blues-jam, hearkening back to his previous projects with blues legend Carolina Slim. He, along with the rest of The Sway Machinery, displaced all the usual musical anticipations with the surprisingly rich yarn of story, song and sway.

Gratifyingly, “Hidden Melodies Revealed” similarly captivates with a rich presentation of diverse vocal tonalities and musical genres. On the album, Lockwood successfully and dramatically replicates the storytelling technique you might witness at any of the group’s live performances, introducing at least three of his songs with his own grand mythologies of fallen kings (“The Mask”), misunderstood princesses (“The Princess”) and disillusioned artisan immigrants (“When I First Came to This Country”). His cantorial-infused songs are likewise influenced by multiple sources: “I Shall Chant Praise,” for example, is not a cantorial favorite; in fact, I was surprised to learn from him that the song is a variation on a traditional Breslov melody. And while the ambitious and elaborate “Ahavas Olam” and “Avinu Malkenu” have stronger cantorial foundations, both are original compositions of Lockwood’s recently deceased grandfather, cantor Jacob Konigsburg, with whom he spent weekly childhood visits listening to such great cantors as Zawel Kwartin, Pierre Pinchik and Berele Chagy.

For Lockwood, cantorial music’s “mythical potential” transcends even the genre’s spiritual nature. Expounding on cantorial music’s world, reminiscent of a fairy tale, as well as on his influence by the Hasidic tradition of folk tale and music, he explained how the music principally evokes a mythical world of possibilities, a world in which we are invited to find and create our own stories. Through a freshly cast sound in (what often seems to be) a dry and obsolete tradition, The Sway Machinery encourages us to make our own stories and locate that “mythical space”— what Lockwood calls “the fairy-tale-like quality” of cantorial music. Through his medium, what he hopes to teach is, “Everyone needs to dig into the realm of stories and mystical teaching,” and that Judaism will return to this “intellectual promise” in which Jews will “continue to plunge into stories,” connecting and continuing their inherent folk tradition through story and music-making.

Slipping away from The Chulent at around 2 a.m., I was left with the resounding, triumphant vision of Hasidim of the old world dancing to familiar music retold and recast in a new age; and I retained echoes of the words Lockwood croons so well on his sole English and blues track, titled “Tell It All to Me”: “Oh babe/I put my symphony in your hands.” Indeed, Sway Machinery’s symphonic achievement is the disenfranchisement of its claim to meaning, myth and music. We are the myth-makers; we are telling and retelling our stories, forever making them relevant. We are those New Age Hasidim dancing to age-old tunes set to even fresher rhythms.

In fact, it is so wonderful simply because it is in our hands.

--Hillel Broder - Forward

Press releases don’t really mean anything to me. About 20 arrive here every day, 90% with the variation of “the next Beatles”, or “the next Bob Dylan”. Occasionally a creative one will say “the next Beastie Boys”. Whatever. I glance at ‘em and toss ‘em, and wait for the CD to arrive. Point is, I always glance at ‘em. The other 9.999% I save in my memory, and anxiously await the arrival of the CD because their authors have chosen to ignore the sound-alike phase of the press release. Let’s face it, a true artist sounds like themselves and no one else, so those are the ones I wait for with open ears. But that 1 in 10,000 arrived this week.

The press release said “Hidden Melodies Revealed showcases pieces based on text taken directly from the Jewish prayers and reconfigures them in a startlingly new musical landscape.” Now, that caught my eye. Updated music for Jewish prayers – I’m intrigued enough to visit the website. Once there I found a lot of interesting prose describing what was going on, but wat really caught my eye was "in the Cantor’s balance of artistic authority and spiritual humility I see a perfect stance from which to speak to the emotional needs of the contemporary world. Together with my colleagues, I am revisiting the work of my heroes of Chazzanus, particularly the music of my grandfather, the legendary Cantor Jacob Konigsberg. In this way I am hoping to return to that place of childlike awe that he opened to me and share it with the world."

Now there’s something I didn’t want to wait to hear. Some more research led me to the website of their record company, which allowed for the download of a tune from their last EP , and the download of several tunes from their forthcoming CD. Usually at this point I would contact the publicist and ask for the CD because I like to preview a full CD before telling you guys about it. This couldn’t wait – it is exciting and fulfilling music. Think John Coltrane in the studio with James Brown’s band with Ike Turner directing alongside Bootsy Collins and Tito Puente while Bobby Zimmerman sings the prayers of his Bar Mitsvah. It’s definitely a Hebrew sounding narration with the joy of trance-filled musicians talking the music of the spheres. I am transported, which is the purpose. Will the CD fulfill this promise? I’ll let you know when/if it arrives, but you owe it to yourself to visit the jdub records website and download the sample tunes for yourself.
- Eartaste

Sway Machinery was co-founded three years ago by Jeremiah Lockwood, a blues guitarist and grandson of renowned Jewish cantor Jacob Konigsberg. The band includes some of the heaviest hitters in the jazz, funk and rock scenes in New York, including Stuart Bogie (tenor sax) and Jordan McLean (trumpet) of Antibalas, Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Nick Chase and bass saxophonist Colin Stetson, a multi-instrumentalist and regular touring member of Arcade Fire. Stefan Schneider, a member of Bell Orchestre, which features members of Arcade Fire, has been filling in recently for Chase on the drums.

It's safe to say that Sway Machinery has arrived at a sound that is both inimitable and challenging. The music was deep and funky at times, bluesy and hypnotic at others. Bogie, McLean and Stetson were monsters on their instruments and the result was a bottom-heavy funk with Antibalas-esque horn blasts all over it. But, Lockwood's cantorial delivery, which resides somewhere in the neighborhood of Tuvan throat singing but deeper, was jarring. He delved into Yiddish, Aramaic and Hebrew throughout the night. And while the instrumental passages often seemed to crash into the vocal sections, it also made for some exhilarating, incomparable moments.

One of those was the closer of the 45-minute set, "Ahzemair Bishvecho," which started slowly but built into a soaring call-and-response. Lockwood's singing shrunk from verses into rapid-fire raps, and Bogie and McLean stabbed right back with short horn blasts. "Adiray Ayumah" was a sort of cantorial blues, with the band joined by Bay Area multi-instrumentalist Dan Cantrell on accordion and opera singer Megan Stetson on background vocals. On "A Staff of Strength," from the band's forthcoming album, Hidden Melodies Revealed, the band bathed Lockwood's lyrics in a sultry riddim lathered with pungent horns. - JamBase

The latest indie supergroup has a sound that.... well, you just have to hear to describe. Listen now!

New supergroup development! Brian Chase, drummer for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Colin Stetson, touring saxophonist for the Arcade Fire, and Stuart Bogie and Jordan McLean, Antibalas' tenor saxophone and trumpet player, respectively, have joined Balkan Beat Box guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood for the Sway Machinery, whose self-titled debut EP is set to arrive September 16 via JDub.

With such a wild assortment of musicians, what could this new project possibly sound like? Well, listen to the eclectic afro-beat, blues, and Jewish-cantorial (songs sung in synagogue) melange of "P'sach Lanu Sha'ar (Open the Gates for Us)" below, the very first leak from the band's forthcoming album. - Spin.com

What do you get when you take bluesman and Balkan Beat Box guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood, add the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s drummer Brian Chase, two horn players from Antibalas, Stuart Bogie and Jordan McLean, and bass saxophonist Colin Stetson of Arcade Fire and Tom Waits’ band? The funkiest bar mitzvah band on the planet, The Sway Machinery. I first heard about the Sway Machinery from Stuart Bogie six months ago while interviewing him for an article about Antibalas and had been eagerly anticipating seeing the band in concert ever since. I checked them out Wednesday night at University Settlement on the Lower East Side. They totally blew away my extremely high expectations.

The Sway Machinery is a project inspired by Jeremiah Lockwood’s grandfather, the legendary Cantor Jacob Konigsberg, who exposed Jeremiah to Jewish Cantorial music at a young age. Lockwood sings in Hebrew perfecting the other-worldly sound the musical arrangement creates. The Sway Machinery is definitely like nothing you’ll see or hear anywhere else. They have a harsh, powerful sound anchored by the bass saxophone and enhanced by the rest of the horn section. Their set exhibited great range going from slow, deep, dark, and mysterious to fast funky, happy, and danceable.

-Marc Amigone - QuietColor.com

Decked out in suits, The Sway Machinery may look formal when they perform, but what they are is focused, in a sort of collective trance. Stuart Bogie, on tenor sax, spends as much time clapping and dancing joyously around the stage as he does blowing his horn. Jordan McLean’s trumpet laces the sound with what he calls “spirit-driven overtones.” As Colin Stetson, bass saxophonist, holds down the low end, his motions appear to waver between dancing and wrestling. Brian Chase snaps the band along from his drum kit. Between tunes, original narrations written and performed by bandleader Jeremiah Lockwood thread the songs together with epic imagery of trials that must be endured.

For Lockwood, these sagas represent Rosh Hashanah’s most salient theme, and it’s one that resonates deeply—no matter the time of year, The Sway Machinery often perform selections from the High Holiday liturgy. “On the New Year it is written who will live and who will die and what our fates will be in the year to come,” he says. “Only three things can avert the harsh decree of heaven: charity, prayer, and penitence…in order to actuate our destinies we must open ourselves on the most core level to feelings of fear, pain, beauty, and transcendence.” Energized by this idea, next Monday and Tuesday, for the second year in a row, Lockwood and his band will put on a Rosh Hashanah multi-media extravaganza; the two-night performance will take place at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan’s Greenwhich Village.

History is a driving force behind The Sway Machinery, which, for the past two years, has been devoted to Lockwood’s ongoing “Hidden Melodies Revealed,” a project to revitalize and re-contextualize Ashkenazic cantorial music. According to the project’s mission statement, the group “is unapologetically focused on the rediscovery of self in history and myth.”

Next week’s shows mark the beginning of a new year that is sure to yield many new stories for The Sway Machinery. JDub Records has just released their EP; in late January comes Hidden Melodies Revealed, the band’s first full-length album. In support of the release, the band will tour nationally.

Having grown up with the music of his grandfather, Cantor Jacob Konigsberg, Lockwood has spent his life steeped in traditional Jewish cantorial songs, coming to appreciate how they’ve endured through time and over physical distances. The nomadic roots of these songs inspire Lockwood, resulting in a reverent appreciation for music that transcends any one religion.

No matter your faith, you most likely can’t understand all of the lyrics Lockwood sings, chants, and growls in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic. But there is something familiar in his arrangements, rich with wailing horns, testifying guitar, and rhythms and cadences borne out of Africa, forced across an ocean and deposited in the New World where they became the blues and jazz.

The band members, all in their early thirties, share plenty of history and have star-studded resumes in common, not to mention a penchant for abstract, whimsical turns of phrase. Lockwood has busked all over his hometown, New York City, carved out a name for himself as a blues musician and singer-songwriter with solo albums, and toured with Balkan Beat Box. Chase also drums in the indie band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Stetson has toured and recorded with artists ranging from Arcade Fire to Tom Waits, Bogie and McLean perform together in the experimental Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. Together, they exalt in what Bogie calls “the straight-up rapture of life crystallized through music.”

Last year’s Rosh Hashanah event took place at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, a former synagogue, now an arts center, where Lockwood’s grandfather made his New York City debut in 1949. The 2007 show marked the first time that Chase performed with The Sway Machinery, although it would have been impossible to tell; the experience sold him on becoming part of the band. “The sounds of sacred Jewish music have been with me throughout my life and it is a privilege to work with that material in this new way,” he says. Under the vaulted ceiling in the shadows of grand chandeliers and floral arrangements, the crowd responded ecstatically to the band.

Of the more than five hundred people in attendance, maybe half were Jewish, according to Lockwood’s estimate. Lockwood says his shows appeal even to people who observe Rosh Hashanah in a more conventional manner, many of whom are enchanted by “the concept of creating art by accessing elements of traditional culture.”

Along with music, this year’s event will feature The Akeidah, a short animated film by 2007 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow Shawn Atkins that was also part of last year’s festivities; the shows will also mark the debut of Scenes From a Life of Ben Zion Kapov-Kagan, a nine-minute stop-motion puppet animation film by acclaimed illustrator Andrea Dezso, narrated by the actress Yuli Ya'el Be'eri.



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09.26.08
Swinging in the New Year
The Sway Machinery party like it’s 5769
by Buzz Poole
The Sway Machinery
The Sway Machinery, from the left: Stuart Bogie, Jeremiah Lockwood, Tomer Tzur, Jordan McLean, Colin Stetson
Decked out in suits, The Sway Machinery may look formal when they perform, but what they are is focused, in a sort of collective trance. Stuart Bogie, on tenor sax, spends as much time clapping and dancing joyously around the stage as he does blowing his horn. Jordan McLean’s trumpet laces the sound with what he calls “spirit-driven overtones.” As Colin Stetson, bass saxophonist, holds down the low end, his motions appear to waver between dancing and wrestling. Brian Chase snaps the band along from his drum kit. Between tunes, original narrations written and performed by bandleader Jeremiah Lockwood thread the songs together with epic imagery of trials that must be endured.

For Lockwood, these sagas represent Rosh Hashanah’s most salient theme, and it’s one that resonates deeply—no matter the time of year, The Sway Machinery often perform selections from the High Holiday liturgy. “On the New Year it is written who will live and who will die and what our fates will be in the year to come,” he says. “Only three things can avert the harsh decree of heaven: charity, prayer, and penitence…in order to actuate our destinies we must open ourselves on the most core level to feelings of fear, pain, beauty, and transcendence.” Energized by this idea, next Monday and Tuesday, for the second year in a row, Lockwood and his band will put on a Rosh Hashanah multi-media extravaganza; the two-night performance will take place at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan’s Greenwhich Village.

History is a driving force behind The Sway Machinery, which, for the past two years, has been devoted to Lockwood’s ongoing “Hidden Melodies Revealed,” a project to revitalize and re-contextualize Ashkenazic cantorial music. According to the project’s mission statement, the group “is unapologetically focused on the rediscovery of self in history and myth.”

Next week’s shows mark the beginning of a new year that is sure to yield many new stories for The Sway Machinery. JDub Records has just released their EP; in late January comes Hidden Melodies Revealed, the band’s first full-length album. In support of the release, the band will tour nationally.

Having grown up with the music of his grandfather, Cantor Jacob Konigsberg, Lockwood has spent his life steeped in traditional Jewish cantorial songs, coming to appreciate how they’ve endured through time and over physical distances. The nomadic roots of these songs inspire Lockwood, resulting in a reverent appreciation for music that transcends any one religion.

No matter your faith, you most likely can’t understand all of the lyrics Lockwood sings, chants, and growls in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic. But there is something familiar in his arrangements, rich with wailing horns, testifying guitar, and rhythms and cadences borne out of Africa, forced across an ocean and deposited in the New World where they became the blues and jazz.

The band members, all in their early thirties, share plenty of history and have star-studded resumes in common, not to mention a penchant for abstract, whimsical turns of phrase. Lockwood has busked all over his hometown, New York City, carved out a name for himself as a blues musician and singer-songwriter with solo albums, and toured with Balkan Beat Box. Chase also drums in the indie band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Stetson has toured and recorded with artists ranging from Arcade Fire to Tom Waits, Bogie and McLean perform together in the experimental Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. Together, they exalt in what Bogie calls “the straight-up rapture of life crystallized through music.”

sound check at Angel Orensanz
Colin Stetson and Brian Chase doing a sound check at the Angel Orensanz Foundation
Last year’s Rosh Hashanah event took place at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, a former synagogue, now an arts center, where Lockwood’s grandfather made his New York City debut in 1949. The 2007 show marked the first time that Chase performed with The Sway Machinery, although it would have been impossible to tell; the experience sold him on becoming part of the band. “The sounds of sacred Jewish music have been with me throughout my life and it is a privilege to work with that material in this new way,” he says. Under the vaulted ceiling in the shadows of grand chandeliers and floral arrangements, the crowd responded ecstatically to the band.

Of the more than five hundred people in attendance, maybe half were Jewish, according to Lockwood’s estimate. Lockwood says his shows appeal even to people who observe Rosh Hashanah in a more conventional manner, many of whom are enchanted by “the concept of creating art by accessing elements of traditional culture.”

Along with music, this year’s event will feature The Akeidah, a short animated film by 2007 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow Shawn Atkins that was also part of last year’s festivities; the shows will also mark the debut of Scenes From a Life of Ben Zion Kapov-Kagan, a nine-minute stop-motion puppet animation film by acclaimed illustrator Andrea Dezso, narrated by the actress Yuli Ya'el Be'eri.



Lockwood commissioned the fictionalized retelling of the life of the Cantor Kapov-Kagan, a real figure whose songs charmed Lockwood by borrowing from non-Western musical traditions and whose biography lends itself to Lockwood’s ideas about the significance of journeys. Kapov-Kagan led a tragic life: he fled the Bolsheviks, leaving his family in Russia behind forever. For Lockwood, Kapov-Kagan’s work and life story evoke “the dynamic of being a great spiritual leader and a broken hobo . . . both an allegory for the journey of the soul over the course of the year, and an attempt to access a place of immediate and almost sentimental emotion.”

Lockwood’s approach to The Sway Machinery is lofty and learned. Although most of the band is not Jewish, and certain religious rites and rituals are lost on them, they feed off Lockwood’s interpretations. As McLean says: “There is no experience like the brain chemistry I am swimming in after finishing a concert with this group.” All five members have played in front of crowds of tens of thousands and know what musical energy can do for the player and the audience. That electricity exhilarates them, regardless of the crowd’s size.

For Stetson, the band’s “closeness makes whatever we do together exciting and important,” but he is also motivated by the unique nature of Lockwood’s vision. All the members of The Sway Machinery share a belief in the music’s greater purpose, even if they each express it differently. “We’re reaching back into history and tradition to ground one leg while simultaneously swinging the other leg blindly into people’s hearts and minds,” says Bogie. “We are reading the story and becoming it.”

--Buzz Poole - Nextbook

Jeremiah Lockwood's sterling vocal pedigree was a birthright; he
descends from a long line of cantors and rabbis, but he's the first
to apply that mesmerizing singing-chanting style to all manner of hip
beats. His grandad, Cantor Jacob Konisberg, debuted in this same
venue, back in '49, when it was a real synagogue, and on this very
date. So the ancestors will be hovering and with Lockwood working out with his band Sway Machinery you may become a true believer.

--Elena Oumano - The Village Voice

There has always been something of an air of mystery hanging over some Jewish melodies. The hidden powers attributed by some to niggunim — the insistence of just that syllable being sung on this note — suggest that music is something more than melody, harmony and rhythm. If one could unlock those secrets ... then what? Would the Messiah come?

Jeremiah Lockwood, the extraordinary blues guitarist and singer whose band The Sway Machinery also works its way into postmodern readings of Jewish music, is a little circumspect about his own expectations for the ancient tunes. He is, after all, the grandson of a famous cantor, Jacob Konigsberg (who died this summer), the son of a prominent composer, Larry Lockwood, and he grew up listening to his grandfather’s recordings of Golden Age chazanos. He has fully incorporated that tradition into his own work, never more so than in a new piece, “Hidden Melodies Revealed” that he and the band will premiere on Sept. 12.

“My grandfather is the primary inspiration [for the piece],” Lockwood said in a recent phone interview. “But I am also trying to mythologize about a place of Jewish identity outside the contemporary options that are available. There’s a paucity of traditional feeling both in the mainstream Jewish world and the exclusionary extremism of the ultra-Orthodox world and the morally questionable elements in Zionism. As a diaspora Jew [none of these] answer my craving for a place of Jewishness.”

In a sense, then, “Hidden Melodies” is about retreating into the past to find that place, a secret locus of Jewish identity and spirituality that speaks to Lockwood through music.

In his notes for the project, Lockwood has written, “ The music of the great Cantors is an astounding synthesis of personal creative innovation and total subservience to traditional art forms. In the work of the master Chazzanim can be heard a knowledge of the modes and gestures of ancient synagogue art and the communication of an individual soul rooted in its particular time and place.”

Oddly enough, that is exactly how I would describe the place of the individual artist in the blues tradition, the other musical heritage in which Lockwood has steeped himself. And like the blues tradition, a lot of chazanos, despite the higher degree of education found among its practitioners, is passed along orally. When he sat in his grandfather’s study listening to Zawel Kwartin, Pierre Pinchik and Berele Chagy, Lockwood was being inducted into their mysteries much as he was when he began playing with Carolina Slim.

His band has changed considerably to meet the new musical needs of its leader. Gone is the trio that had been the Sway Machinery, replaced by a new, sleeker model with more moving parts. It’s a change that pleases Lockwood immensely.

“It’s new stuff for me,” he admitted. “Larger ensembles more and more are what I’m about in music, being a composer, arranger, organizer as much as an instrumentalist.”

No secret there.

--George Robinson - The Jewish Week

Fronted by Balkan Beat Box guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood, indie supergroup the Sway Machinery — which also includes members of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Antibalas, and Arcade Fire — formed in 2006 but waited three years to issue its first full-length release. Now that it’s here, we say it was worth the wait.

Hidden Melodies Revealed features Lockwood singing the Hebrew verses he learned from his grandfather, a famous cantor named Jacob Konigsberg. (Lockwood’s pedigree also includes a stint in the New York City subway system supporting bluesman Carolina Slim.) But if Lockwood’s inspirations are rooted in the past, the album itself is emphatically forward-looking, fusing elements of Afropop, blues, jazz, and post-rock, and capturing the sweep and intensity of the Sway Machinery’s high-energy stage shows. - Very Short List