About
Boisterous and driving, lilting and elegiac, Mamaliga melds the klezmer melodies of old country Yiddishland with new era sensibilities, crafting intricate arrangements of original and traditional tunes to make you dance, laugh and cry – perhaps all at once!
Mamaliga is a critically acclaimed Klezmer band based in Boston MA, and Brooklyn NY. After the 2021 release of their debut full-length album, Dos Gildn Bletl, Mamaliga has performed at Yiddish New York, KlezKanada, Yiddish Summer Weimar, The Boston Festival of New Jewish Music, and KlezCummington and was awarded best original Klezmer composition at the 2021 Bubbe Awards in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Mamaliga debuted their full-length original score of the recently restored silent film Broken Barriers (1919) at the 2022 Toronto Jewish Film Festival. The band is comprised of Rebecca Mac and Rachel Leader on fiddles, Raffi Boden on cello, and Mattias Kaufmann on accordion.
Mamaliga is committed to sharing the joy of Klezmer music with the community. The band hosts a twice-a-month klezmer jam, hosted by the Boston Synagogue.
The Mamaliga duo started making music in 2018, drawing influences from Klezmer music and the folk masters they studied with in Eastern Europe. We always had the dream of becoming a bigger band and during the COVID-19 pandemic, that dream came to fruition: Mamaliga turned into a four-piece ensemble. In June 2021, Mamaliga recorded their debut full-length album. The album consists of nine original klezmer tracks, composed by each of the band members.
“Mamaliga is a virtuosic and vibrant ensemble that successfully transports old-world sensibilities across time and space to new audiences. They claim their rootedness in klezmer traditions through their high level of musicianship, training in traditional practice, and reflection of historical klezmer resonances in their ensemble presentation. And they unmistakably argue in favor of the transmissibility of old-world aesthetics, in the midst of a moment in which “Yiddish music” encompasses an incredibly wide range of popular, classical, folk, and hybridized modes of musicking."
— Max Friedman, In Geveb