Berliner Abendpost - DJ Chaia Brings 'Yiddishland' Sound to Capital Region with Kleztronica Rave

Electronic music composer and performer Chaia is concluding an immersive sound installation at Skidmore College’s Tang Teaching Museum with a series of public engagements in New York’s Capital Region this December. The events bridge Yiddish cultural history, radical political movements, and contemporary electronic dance music, culminating in the region’s first Kleztronica Hanukkah party.

Chaia’s work is defined by its fusion of archival Yiddish recordings with modern techno and ambient compositions. By transforming historical voices into raw material for contemporary soundscapes, she connects the cultural memory of Eastern European Jewish life with global dance-floor culture. This project extends beyond the museum walls; Chaia has integrated these archival elements into recent concert tours at leading electronic music venues, including Brooklyn’s Public Records.

The upcoming engagements offer audiences multiple entry points into Chaia’s evolving exploration of "Yiddishland." These include an immersive sound installation, a dialogue on historical memory and radical politics, and a communal celebration on the dance floor.

On Saturday, December 5, 2026, from 3 to 8 p.m., Kleztronica makes its inaugural appearance in the Capital Region. Headlined by Chaia, who coined the term "Kleztronica" to describe her specific fusion of klezmer and electronic dance music, the event will take place at Congregation Berith Sholom in Troy. The historic sanctuary, noted as the oldest continuously operating synagogue building in New York State, will host a dancefloor celebration described as an exploration of ancestral belonging through electronic beats.

The afternoon program includes an opening DJ set by Troy-based DJ Mercy!!!, who also owns Paper Moon bookstore. Attendees will participate in a Hanukkah line dance with instruction from Lo Ryder and watch a dance performance by Liv McKee, a local choreographer and member of the Ellen Sinopoli Company. The event concludes with a communal candlelighting ritual.

Kleztronica aims to create space for cultural memory, aesthetic experimentation, and collective celebration. By combining klezmer, Yiddish song, archival recordings, and electronic rhythms, the movement seeks to bring Jewish diasporic traditions into conversation with contemporary art, nightlife culture, and a liberationist ethos.

Prior to the party, Chaia’s work is featured as the 55th installment of the Tang Museum’s Elevator Music series. Her installation, titled "Yiddishland on the Move: In a Strange Town, Who Will Bless Us?," transforms the museum’s elevator into a site for sonic art. The immersive audio collage foregrounds the sounds of everyday life within the Jewish Labor Bund, drawing on newly digitized archival recordings from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project.

Founded in 1897, the Jewish Labor Bund was a major Jewish socialist movement that advocated for workers’ rights, secular Yiddish culture, and solidarity across national and ethnic boundaries. Its vision of "doikayt"—Yiddish for "hereness"—promoted the principle of building a meaningful Jewish life wherever one resides, offering an alternative to nationalism rooted in territorial belonging.

Through the juxtaposition of archival voices and contemporary electronic sound, Chaia explores the relationships between cultural memory, political organizing, and collective liberation. Visitors can tour and discuss the exhibition with co-curator and Professor Adam Tinkle on December 4 at noon.

Chaia will also join acclaimed artist, journalist, and bestselling author Molly Crabapple for a conversation about the history and contemporary resonance of the Jewish Labor Bund. The discussion addresses the subject of Chaia’s Tang exhibition and Crabapple’s new book, "Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund," published by One World/Random House in 2026.

Crabapple’s work combines meticulous archival research, vivid historical storytelling, and her distinctive illustrations to recover the history of a revolutionary movement that championed secular Jewish culture and international solidarity. Critics have praised the book for illuminating an overlooked chapter of Jewish history and its relevance to contemporary struggles over nationalism and identity.

Upon the publication of her new book, Crabapple has joined the ranks of influential Jewish intellectuals of her generation. An award-winning artist and journalist, her reporting and illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone. Her illustrated book "Brothers of the Gun," co-authored with Syrian journalist Marwan Hisham, was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her animated films have won two Emmy Awards and an Edward R. Murrow Award, and her artwork is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art.

Chaia, a New York-based composer raised in the klezmer tradition, combines accordion, vocals, and electronic samplers in live performance to bend audiences toward intergenerational memory and cultural reinvention. Her work has been presented internationally at festivals and venues in Europe and North America. Her mixes have been featured on leading EDM platforms including The Lot Radio, dublab, and Res Radio. Her debut album, "Yiddish Electronic," was released in 2025.

Chaia’s work has received support from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Goethe-Institut, and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance.

D.Mayer--BlnAP