With only a week to go before their highly anticipated sophomore album's official release, the Jewish Monkeys are revving up the promo engine or as The Jerusalem Post called it, Monkeying Around. In a recent interview with Ariel Dominique Hendelman of the leading Israeli English newspaper, Ran Bagno (accordion) and Gael Zaidner (vocals) shared their thoughts on the band, talked about a momentous performance in front of Syrian refugees and hinted at the fact that there already is a third album in the making.
"As a band, we started off with a more Balkan/Klezmer sound. Now it became more high energy, more exciting, more rock, more punk. It’s more of a blend of all of the places we are coming from. The band is a fusion of our stories; an Israeli salad", says Ran Bagno at one point. "I would like to emphasize that our sound is very Middle Eastern", Gael Zaidner points out.
Asked why it is so important to laugh at taboos, Bagno answers: "I think it’s the only way to deal with them. We can’t preach about things. If you speak about something with humour, it’s much easier to contain it in my opinion. We are a funny band. We have three singers in the front who are all very strong characters. It’s powerful. The audience is dancing and responding. When we see that, we know that something moved them. Some of our songs have very funny lyrics and we see the audience’s reaction to that. We see that they got the point."
Read the full interview here and give the Jewish Monkeys' second album "High Words" a listen while you're at it. Gut Shabbes!