Brivele Havdala Concert

Brivele is a Seattle-based anti-fascist klezmer folk-punk trio, who braid together oral history, Yiddish language, contemporary and old-country musical genres, American vaudeville, and visual arts.

Brivele is pronounced “BREE-veh-leh” (בריוועלע) and means “Little Letter” in Yiddish.

Brivele is a discontented punky-klezy trio of Yiddishists, a little letter for you—
Love letters, letters about home—where it got lost, where it might be now—and letters fomenting revolution!

Letters travel—through time, over borders— they pick up dirt, and aromas, and fingerprints. They get stolen and censored, burned and salvaged, sewn into our clothes. Our songs are palimpsest in that way too, they travel long-ways in bits and pieces, through us, to you!

We are discontented, sometimes silly, never slick, always cheeky. We draw from a long tradition of Diaspora-proud struggle, ‘cuz the World to Come is gonna be right here, where we are. It is a world that does right by all the folk.

We sing always with a bissel Yiddish, because sometimes Yiddish says it best, and because we are the grandchildren or great-grandchildren, or great-great-grandchildren of Yiddish, so it tastes familiar and unfamiliar at once. We sing it like the mixed-up, impure Yids we are and strive to be.