Fortuna

For a band that makes the bold claim to being ‘the one and only’ Amsterdam Klezmer Band, the outfit has rarely been about straight-up, unadulterated klezmer. While the core remains so, AKB has always served its musical cocktail with a dash of something else – be it Balkan, reggae or hip-hop. In Fortuna all of the tracks are original, and for the first time front-man Job Chajes tries his hand at composing in English, offering up three English-language tracks, most notably ‘After the Storm’, where long-time hip-hop aficionado Chajes raps about spreading global karma while ‘smoking ganja’ and dissing ‘sucker DJs’ and ‘roughin’ reggae in a Netherlands style’ to a swaggering, joyously off-kilter reggae rhythm.

Most of AKB's 16 albums have at least one infectious dance track, and on this one it's ‘Shabash’, an arrangement of a Romanian song by Gabi Luncă, with an original text by AKB's man from Odessa, Alec Kopyt, sung in boozy, punch-drunk Russian, reeling from one line to the next. A poetic ode to laziness, Kopyt sings (I translate): ‘Whatever you say – whether you praise me or curse me – even if you take all my money, I am at the beach’.