Oi Va Voi
Laughter Through Tears

Oh My God!

Since I terribly like heresies, when I heard about an album that mixed klezmer with drum n’ bass elements, my curiosity was immediately piqued and I went searching for it. Meanwhile, I discovered very little about the artists who conceived this project.

The "Oi Va Voi" are six London-based musicians, although two members of the group, Sophie Solomon (violin) and Lemez Lovas (trumpet and vocals), boast Russian origins, and "Laughter Through Tears" (Outcaste records - 2003) is their first studio recording, enthusiastically received by much of the critics, who identified their music as a genre definable as "folktronica".

The premises, therefore, were good, but the listening unfortunately turned out to be disappointing. From the opening track, I realized that "Laughter Through Tears" was not the album I expected. The opening track, "Refugee", is a cute little song, reminiscent of Morcheeba. Cute yes, but nothing more. I'll forget it quickly. And where are the contaminations? Bah... I skip to the second track ("Yesterday's Mistakes") and finally start hearing something that sounds interesting: a voice that evokes the Balkans, a cello, an electronic background. I begin to hope, in vain. Meh... it's like eating French fries and Nutella.
Maybe some people like it, but not me! The following tracks mix electronics, strings, a bit of jazz, and some trendy Latin atmosphere. There's no point in continuing the description, because there's not much to say.

The attempt to blend Yiddish folk and electronic atmospheres is indeed there, but it is not successful at all. This doesn't mean that the album is horrible, in fact, its listening is objectively not unpleasant. However, it's the operation behind it that gives me hives.
It seems like a clever idea, poorly exploited.

Overall, the result is trivial, ephemeral, and has the taste of futility. More like folktronica. The music of the "Oi Va Voi" may be likable, it's catchy, but nothing more. In some ways, their project can be likened to that of the "Gotan Project" with "La Revancha Del Tango". But while the "Gotan Project" skillfully manages to retain the painful soul of tango in modernization, the "Oi Va Voi", on the contrary, do not carry the spirit of the Yiddish tradition in their music. In fact, "thanks" to their rhythmic and vocal enrichment, they manage "perfectly" to temper it, dilute it, resulting in an artificial background music lacking originality, more suitable for a cocktail party or a fashion show than directed at reflecting on how a musical-ethnic tradition can be reinterpreted.

It is an album poor in content, but rich in special effects and ideas, all unfortunately confused.