There is an entire sub-genre of bluegrass, referred to as Jewgrass, performed by Jewish musicians around the country. A recent Harvard grad even wrote an award winning scholarly piece about the history of such music and I’ll be publishing an interesting story about that soon.
But as we are in the holiday season it seemed appropriate to highlight some music I just discovered in this genre. I recently came across a band from Silver Spring, Maryland calling themselves the Sinai Mountain Boys. This band is comprised of four Orthodox Jewish musicians who blend the sounds of bluegrass with Chassidic and other Jewish melodies.
I discovered this band on a blog belonging to a brother of one of the band members. The author had highlighted a song his brother performed for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Very cool.
Click over to hear the Sinai Mountain Boys perform a “Jewgrass” version of Oh Hanukkah.
