Daily Discovery: The Klezmatics – Spin Dreydl Spin

Daily Discoveries

 

New York klezmer group The Klezmatics bring Woody Guthrie’s Hanukkah writing back into circulation with “Spin Dreydl Spin”, reissued in remastered form on the 2025 expanded edition of Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah from Shamus Records. The track first appeared on the original 2006 release through Jewish Music Group, pairing Hanukkah lyrics Guthrie wrote in 1949 with new music by violinist and vocalist Lisa Gutkin. The reissue arrives during the band’s 40th anniversary year.

The performance strips back to a sparse trio: Gutkin’s violin, Matt Darriau’s Jew’s harp and David Licht on drums. Darriau’s Jew’s harp rattles beneath the melody with playful, percussive accents whilst Licht’s drums keep the rhythm moving and Gutkin’s violin carries Guthrie’s simple dreidel tune. The minimalist setting ties klezmer dance rhythms to American folk references, working both as a family Hanukkah song and as contemporary klezmer chamber music.

The Klezmatics formed in the mid-1980s out of New York’s East Village scene and helped define the klezmer revival by pulling Ashkenazi dance music into conversation with jazz and rock. That cross-genre approach has marked their work since the beginning, from collaborations with Itzhak Perlman and Chava Alberstein to partnerships with Arlo Guthrie and gospel singer Joshua Nelson. Their Grammy for Wonder Wheel confirmed the success of that Guthrie connection, and Happy Joyous Hanukkah has since become a regular Hanukkah release in Jewish and American folk circles, and this 2025 remaster of “Spin Dreydl Spin” underlines how directly the band can connect Guthrie’s straightforward dreidel lyric to a focused klezmer setting.

Listen and stream the remastered track through THIS LINK