Bob Cohen was born in New York in 1956. His mother was Hungarian and his father Moldavian. As a child, he visited Hungary several times, where he took a liking to the Sebő Ensemble and dance houses. In his homeland, he played several styles of music, and worked in radio as well as an ethnographer. When he returned to Hungary in the late 1980s, he commenced his research on the region’s Jewish musical heritage, including songs, dances and musical instruments. He often traveled to Transylvania to expand his research collections.
In 1993, he founded Di Naye Kapelye (The New Band) with accordionist Christina Crowder and bassist Géza Pénzes; the band’s line-up has changed several times over the following years.
The musicians approach klezmer music as a living folk art, and present it in the style it would have been performed in its heyday. In addition to Hungarian, Romanian, Moldavian and Yiddish music, their repertoir also includes traditional Hasidic tunes. Their 2008 album, Traktorist, ranked high on Songline World Music Magazine’s ”Top of the World” list of best new albums.
