Forty years of Finjan ‘Canada’s first klezmer band’ returns to folk fest By: Ben Waldman Posted: 2:24 PM CDT Friday, Jul. 7, 2023

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This article was published 07/07/2023 (833 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Sunday, local klezmer all-stars Finjan will return to the Winnipeg Folk Festival for the first time in more than 20 years, 40 years after the group made its Birds Hill Park debut in 1983.

But first, they had to get through their warm-up gig, a Tuesday morning set that brought the soaring melodies of eastern Europe to a humbler, less rowdy locale: the parking lot of a North End Jewish seniors’ centre.

“My wife knew it was going to be jammed and thought we might not get a seat,” said the first audience member to arrive, a retired insurance pro. “And what do you know, we get here earlier than the musicians.”

Just after 10 a.m., the band — Shayla Fink (vocals, piano), Kinsey Posen (double bass, vocals), Daniel Koulack (guitar) Daniel Roy (percussion) and the brothers Myron (clarinet) and Victor (violin) Schultz — arrived at the Gwen Secter Creative Living Centre to get their instruments in tune and their sensibilities in sync.

An hour later, they started the gig the same way they have since before any of them were married or had children: one by one, they stacked their hands in the middle and raised them to the sky, chanting their band’s name with a sputtering ‘F’ before counting the songs in, in Yiddish, with an emphatic “einz, zvei, drei, feer.”

“We’ve been doing that for 40 years,” Posen said later, with a mix of disbelief and wonder.

Not many bands can say the same thing. “Just Finjan and the Rolling Stones,” joked Fink.

Though Mick Jagger and company are several years ahead, klezmer in general and Finjan’s music in particular is just as enduring as anything the Stones ever released. With a mix of global influences tracing from Poland, Ukraine, Turkey and Morocco to the Maritimes and rural Quebec, Finjan’s brand of klezmer is as evocative and playful today as it was in 1983, or as it would have been in 1903.

“Every genre has its own gifts,” said Judy Tennenhouse, a former violin teacher and lifelong appreciator of klezmer. “(Klezmer) comes with a rhythm, a heart, and the Jewish soul. Finjan has always had it.”

“You can quote me on this,” said Lil Duboff, a longtime fan, after Finjan finished its last number. “This music brings back a lot of memories.”

It’s no different for the bandmates, who until this week didn’t fully grasp that 40 years had passed since their careers together began.

Back in 1982, the members of the group were all budding professional musicians, playing at weddings and bar mitzvahs while lending their talents to local ensembles. “When we started playing, klezmer was an unknown quantity,” said Myron Schultz, who came to love the genre while playing with Winnipeg’s Chai Folk Ensemble.

“We’ve been doing that for 40 years. Just Finjan and the Rolling Stones.”–Shayla Fink

 

At the time, other global genres, including zydeco, were undergoing a popular revival, Schultz says. Noticing a gap in the market, Finjan was born, establishing itself as “Canada’s first klezmer band.” Each member had their own pre-existing connection to the style of music, which Schultz says in many ways “is the replication of the voice in instrument form.”

The Schultz brothers came to klezmer from the world of classical music. Posen came up as a rock, blues, and jazz player. The late Eli Herscovitch brought jazz sensibilities to his saxophone, horn and flute playing. Fink’s grandfather had a klezmer band of his own in Europe, and as a child, she starred with her siblings in a family band, taught to appreciate music from a young age. “We didn’t have lots of furniture, but we always had a piano,” she says.

After playing their first show in February 1983 for the CBC program Identities, Myron Schultz introduced himself to Mitch Podolak, the late co-founder of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. “I said, ‘What do you think of having a klezmer band play at the festival?’”

Podolak loved the idea; in those days, it was as simple as that.

That was their second show.

What do they remember about that first folk fest? “The food,” Posen says quickly. If he recalls correctly, the artists were served a gigantic meal that included a suckling pig. (The members of the group who keep kosher abstained.)

They also remember that it was extremely hot, and that during their performance, they accidentally repeated a song. “We didn’t even realize it during the show, but we played the same tune twice, because we didn’t have anything more.”

On Sunday, they’ll still look forward to the food and be forced to deal with the heat, but filling the time slot shouldn’t be a problem: Finjan has played the folk fest six times, with five albums under its belt, including 1992’s Crossing Selkirk Avenue and 2000’s Dancing on Water, both of which were nominated for Junos.

Based on the audience reaction at the parking lot show, Finjan hasn’t lost a step. “So much of this music is inside us,” Posen said. “So when we play, even if we haven’t for a while, it’s amazing how much we remember.”

Though most of the audience tapped their feet from the comfort of their seats, the tie-dye-clad Nancy Shell was dancing throughout the entire set, sometimes moving all the way out of the parking lot to get more room to groove. It was her warm-up gig too: she’ll be at Birds Hill Sunday afternoon to see Finjan again.

She won’t be the only one dancing.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com