Black Rooster Kapelye

Black Rooster Kapelye is a project dedicated to revitalising Jewish and Latvian folk music. The six  musicians playing a wide range of folk instruments have come together to work with a special  collection of music collected by Latvian composer Emilis Melngailis at the turn of the 20th century.  While Melngailis (whose surname translates to ‘black rooster’) is well known as a prolific collector  of Latvian folk songs, his collection of Jewish music remained virtually unknown for years. But as  one of the only such collections from the region, it offers a rare window into the life and art of  Baltic Jewry of the time. 

Black Rooster Kapelye brings together musicians fluent in Jewish and Latvian folk  traditions, building a creative collaboration between the two historically neighbouring cultures, which would not have been possible in Melngailis’ time. Creating a soundtrack for the present  based on fragmented manuscripts from the past requires a particular blend of knowledge,  research and creativity; an openness to learning and self-discovery; and a vision for a world of  unity and mutual understanding. The group eloquently demonstrates these qualities with the  violin, drum, accordion, bagpipe, wooden flute, kokle, Jew’s harp, poyk, mandolin, voices and  dance steps, which it also teaches audiences. By interpreting traditional songs about shared  topics from two historically adjacent cultures and languages, Black Rooster Kapelye brings these  seemingly distant worlds closer together. 

In 1899 in the small Lithuanian town of Kedainiai, the 25-year-old Melngailis wrote down  60 Jewish songs. In 2012, Latvian-Jewish musicians Ilya Shneyveys and Sasha Lurje were  approached by Ilya Lensky, the director of the Jews in Latvia Museum to create recordings of this  forgotten repertoire for the museum’s permanent exhibition. Ilga Vālodze Ābelkina and her Latvian  folk ensemble Banga later reinterpreted these songs through the lens of the Latvian musical  tradition. This was followed by a collaboration with Shneyveys, Lurje and American musician  Craig Judelman, which led to the formation of the Black Rooster Kapelye in 2022. Their debut at  the Dresden Jüdische Musik- und Theaterwoche festival marked the band’s first public  appearance. In 2024, the group released the album Vos Mir Zaynen, thus reviving many of these  songs for the first time in over a century. 

Craig Judelman – violin, voice 

Eli Ellere – voice, percussion 

Ilya Shneyveys – accordion, guitar, flutes, voice 

Ilga Vālodze Ābelkina – voice, bagpipes, flutes, kokle, Jew’s harp 

Jānis Zemgus Jātnieks – accordion, mandolin, voice 

Sasha Lurje – voice, poyk 

Photo: Aija Pastore