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Grammy Award winners The Klezmatics will celebrate their 40th anniversary this Hanukkah with a newly remastered vinyl reissue of Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah (out November 21, 2025 on Shamus Records), reviving the band’s acclaimed 2006 settings of Guthrie’s long-lost Hanukkah lyrics.
LISTEN TO HAPPY JOYOUS HANUKKAH
Blending klezmer with American folk, bluegrass, and more, the album showcases favorites like “Hanuka Gelt,” “Spin Dreydl Spin,” and “Happy Joyous Hanuka,” which the group will bring back to the stage during their 2025 Happy Joyous Hanukkah Tour — A Festival of Light, Liberation, and New Music. The tour not only honors Guthrie’s unexpected Jewish-themed songwriting but also offers audiences exclusive previews of The Klezmatics’ forthcoming 14th studio album, We Were Made for These Times (New York Sessions), set for release in May 2026), continuing the band’s tradition of transforming inherited culture into vibrant, revolutionary art.
About the Album Reissue and Tour:
Not many music fans are aware that Woody Guthrie, the American folk songwriter who chronicled the Dust Bowl and the Depression, and penned “This Land is Your Land,” also wrote Hanukkah songs!
This Hanukkah season, as candles are lit across the country, The Klezmatics — the world’s only Grammy Award-winning klezmer band — will re-release their beloved Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah album (out Nov 21, 2025, Shamus Records), honoring Jewish tradition, bold musical reinvention, and the icon Woody Guthrie himself.
For nearly 40 years, The Klezmatics have been transforming klezmer from a niche genre steeped in cultural nostalgia into a living, breathing, revolutionary art form. Nowhere is that spirit more alive than in their legendary collaboration with Woody Guthrie, whose long-lost Hanukkah lyrics were brought to life by the band’s iconic 2006 album Happy Joyous Hanukkah.
In 1942, Woody moved to Brooklyn and, through his mother-in-law, the beloved Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt, became involved with the Coney Island Jewish community. Guthrie and Greenblatt developed an artistic camaraderie, sharing with each other their stories and poems. Woody was inspired to write songs that were directly inspired by this unlikely relationship, both personal and political.
Identifying the Jewish struggle with that of his fellow Okies and other oppressed and disenfranchised peoples, Guthrie began to fill notebooks with lyrics about Hanukkah, about Jewish history, and about spiritual life.
Woody Guthrie’s Jewish lyrics came as a surprise to Nora Guthrie, director of the Woody Guthrie Archives and Woody’s daughter. She became aware of his connection to Judaism only recently, in a chance encounter with the Klezmatics and Itzhak Perlman. Following a concert at Tanglewood, where (unbeknownst to Nora) Perlman and the band had performed some of Greenblatt’s Yiddish songs, Guthrie was introduced to Perlman as “Aliza’s granddaughter.” She recalls, “All my life, I’ve been introduced as Woody’s daughter, Arlo’s sister and Marjorie Mazia’s daughter…but this was the first time I’d ever been introduced as ’Aliza Greenblatt’s granddaughter!’ Then Itzhak asked me how I liked his version of Aliza’s song – I almost fell through the floor. I never knew she wrote songs – I always thought she was just my Bubbie!” The revelation about her grandmother’s history encouraged Nora Guthrie to bring her father’s Jewish songs to light, and she enlisted the Klezmatics to write new music for her father’s previously unpublished lyrics, which resulted in the acclaimed album Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah in 2006.
Now reissued in a beautifully remastered vinyl edition, in celebration of The Klezmatics’ 40th anniversary, the band is sharing Woody Guthrie’s Hanukkah songs with a new generation of listeners. Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah deftly intermingles klezmer with American folk, bluegrass, and other musical genres, and has become a holiday classic since its original release twenty years ago. This delightful collection is among the best of Woody’s work, and The Klezmatics’ playful, varied settings and performances have become an indelible part of the Hanukkah tradition.
This year’s reissue also arrives alongside The Klezmatics’ 2025 Happy Joyous Hanukkah Tour — A Festival of Light, Liberation, and New Music, which bring Guthrie’s rediscovered lyrics back to the stage just as the band enters its 40th anniversary season. While audiences will once again dance to favorites like “Hanuka Gelt,” “Spin Dreydl Spin,” and “Happy Joyous Hanuka,” the tour is also a living continuation of the band’s mission: transforming inherited tradition into something defiantly alive. With their signature blend of Yiddish soul, urban edge, and revolutionary joy, The Klezmatics turn each concert into a luminous gathering — a place where ancient stories, communal spirit, and ecstatic dance rhythms meet.
And in an exciting nod to the future, the 2025 holiday tour will also feature exclusive previews of music from the band’s forthcoming 14th studio album, We Were Made for These Times (New York Sessions)). These new works extend The Klezmatics’ long-standing engagement with themes of migration, solidarity, resistance, and renewal — all delivered with the band’s hallmark virtuosity and fire. Joined by longtime collaborators and special guests, the group offers audiences a Hanukkah celebration like no other: a vibrant bridge between Woody Guthrie’s timeless humanism and the band’s own evolving soundscape, inviting listeners of all backgrounds to dance, reflect, and rejoice together.
Celebrating 40 Years!
In 2026, The Klezmatics will mark four decades as one of the world’s most innovative and influential ensembles with a new album and touring season that bridges the group’s activist foundations with today’s global narratives. Spanning reimagined classics, cross-cultural collaborations, and festive premieres, the 2026–27 season honors a legacy driven by rhythm, justice, and exuberant creativity.
Born in New York’s East Village in 1986, The Klezmatics reshaped klezmer by fusing Yiddish tradition with the edge and energy of punk, gospel, jazz, and international folk. Their 13 acclaimed albums, extensive touring across five continents, and Grammy Award for Wonder Wheel have secured their place at the forefront of Jewish cultural expression and contemporary musical exploration.
At the heart of their anniversary celebration will be the release of the band’s 14th studio album We Were Made for These Times (New York Sessions), accompanied by a global tour, the reissue of their landmark catalogue—including first-ever vinyl releases—and the debut of rare archival recordings and photographs from their earliest days. The new album speaks to themes of immigration, displacement, and solidarity, created in collaboration with artists from around the world who reflect the vibrancy and urgency of today’s New York.
A special preview of We Were Made for These Times (New York Sessions) will be presented at APAP during the Sony Hall showcase.
Get tour tickets here: https://www.klezmatics.com/tour-1
Purchase Happy Joyous Hanukkah here: https://www.klezmatics.com/woody-guthries-happy-joyous-hanukkah
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