National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

According to medieval Jewish folklore, The Golem was a brawny automaton summoned up from the clay of the Vltava river by the Rabbi Lev to protect the Jews of Prague. Got all that? This Golem of legend was famously silent – and infamously destructive.

Today, Golem is a six-piece band from Brooklyn who's anything but quiet – unleashing musical havoc worthy of their medieval namesake. Their sound is a hard-driving mashup of punk rock and Eastern European influences – especially the traditional Yiddish dance music known as Klezmer.

Since the group's 2004 debut, Homesick Songs, Golem has grown into their sound, wowing audiences both at home and abroad with their unique sound and vision – roughed-up violin and accordion licks propelled by fuzzed out guitar and walloping, double-time drums; leading mosh pits in traditional Jewish horas and, yes, still playing weddings.

In February, Nat Geo Music took the opportunity of the release of Golem's third album, Citizen Boris, to catch up with Golem's singer/songwriter/accordionist Annette Ezekiel Kogan to find out more about our favorite musical monster.

Nat Geo Music: How would describe Golem's sound?

Annette Ezekiel Kogan I used to say that we just imagined how Tom Waits would record a Klezmer album and then we took it from there. But I think our sound and our approach have evolved a lot since then. It's hard to define our music in a couple of words, but I would say it's Eastern European Jewish music with a punk rock edge. Klezmer is definitely a part of it, but that's a very conservative genre, and I don't really feel comfortable claiming to be a straight Klezmer band.

Yet Klezmer is still a big component of what you do – so how do rock audiences react when they hear the accordions and violins and the Yiddish language vocals?

I think for the most part, audiences are pretty open-minded. We had a whole tour in September of 2008 opening for the Walkmen. Their audiences really liked what we did… Of course we play dance music, and indie rockers don't dance, but they listened really hard. [laughs]

I think the weirdest thing that's ever happened to us on tour is when we got invited to play this Jewish music festival in Poland. When we got there they had all these Polish kids walking around dressed up in "traditional Jewish costumes" and they were selling these little souvenir dolls meant to look like Jews… it was, um, very disconcerting…

There seem to be a lot of American bands who are mining the music of Eastern Europe for inspiration in the last few years – Gogol Bordello, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Slavic Soul Party – why do you think that is?

I don't really know… I mean obviously the music is really great and a lot of fun for dancing. But I always wonder why these kinds of trends occur, too. I don't think we're part of any wave intentionally, I think it's just more of a generational thing – maybe it has to do with how our generation reacted to the end of the cold war and the opening up of Eastern Europe. We were all able to connect with these sounds and styles that had been closed off for a long time.

But the "Gypsy Punk" tag has been kind of helpful for us, too - even if we don't really play Gypsy music. People used to be like 'What do you do?' and now they're like 'Oh, you guys are like Gogol Bordello." [laughs]

Did you grow up listening to Klezmer music?

When I was younger my grandparents took me to see the Klezmer Conservatory band, and I listened to a lot of their old [Klezmer records], but I don't think that made a huge impact on me at the time. I did get into Ukrainian folk dance at summer camp – seriously! – but musically, I was much more interested in punk rock as a kid.

Today, I love all those bands – The Klezmatics, The Klezmer Conservatory, etc – but I think they're a lot more concerned with authenticity than we are. They're much more grounded in the official tradition than we are. We're a little less intimated by that tradition and a little freer to go wild. I don't think the Klezmer Conservatory Band would do a song like "Tuckuses and Nenes"… the Klezmatics, maybe… [laughs]

Well you definitely don't seem intimidated by any tradition…

For me, preserving the historical memory in a way people my age can relate to is the point. I've had people come up to me after a show & tell me they're inspired to learn Yiddish or learn more about the music and culture. That's what it's about for me… communicating that experience. There are other groups that are way better at this on a technical level, but we're out there reaching an entirely different audience.

Tell me about the new album, Citizen Boris…

Well we're a Brooklyn band, and New York is still very much an immigrant town – we've got so many friends who've come over from Russia and the Ukraine in just the last 15 years – including my husband, Alex. So we wanted to record an album that would reflect that. I wanted to write about the modern immigrant experience in New York, but also connect it up to that classic, 19th century, Ellis Island experience that so many Americans' families had. So that's where the inspiration for a lot of the songs on this album comes from… just from the lives of our friends, and my experience marrying an immigrant. As for the album's title, we got the name from a friend of my husband's named Boris who was taking his citizenship test. For some reason whenever I thought about that, the words "Citizen Boris" just kept rattling around in my head… for some reason it really resonated with me, so we decided to name the album.

Did Boris get his citizenship?

I'm happy to report that he did. We had a great big party and everything.

Not every song on this album is in Yiddish or Russian, you actually sing a few in English, too… was that weird for you?

Not really… I thought it would be kind of weird after performing in other languages for so long, but I was really surprised at how easy it was to write songs in English. It came much easier than I expected. I should've done this a long time ago.

Did you grow up speaking Yiddish?

No. I only learned it fairly recently.

So how did you first get into it?

I guess it's always been more about language and culture for me. Growing up Jewish in America, I was obsessed with everything Eastern European, Russian and Jewish from a very young age. The main thing for me has been learning the languages, Russian and Yiddish. I started learning Russian on my own when I was writing my PhD on French Literature. It was kind of a distraction for me… and I guess it worked because I never finished my degree. [laughs]

I started learning Yiddish a little later, I started going to the Workingmen's Circle in Brooklyn, which is a Yiddish speaking union that dates back to the 19th century, and took some classes there. Sometimes it was just me and some very elderly Yiddish speakers, which kind of says a lot about the need to preserve the language…

Was it hard learning Yiddish?

Not that hard. I have a good ear. I took me a while at first, but now I'm to the point where I can carry on a conversation and read The Forward [Newspaper] in Yiddish once a week. It's funny, though, because most Yiddish speakers tend to be older, so I'm always having conversations with people's grandparents. But I always scan the audience for Yiddish speakers – especially at weddings.

Do you play a lot of weddings?

Actually, I love playing weddings. It's kind of at the heart of what a Klezmer band is supposed to do… and they usually pay pretty well, too…