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On October 6th, sui generis Brooklyn-based band Barbez, in collaboration with singer Velina Brown, release a remarkable tribute to the International Brigades called For Those Who Came After: Songs Of Resistance From The Spanish Civil War. The album, consisting of inventive and moving new renderings of the indelible protest songs of the International Brigades, was recorded live at the Japan Society, in 2016, at the annual reunion of veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The highlight of the reunion has always been the singing of these songs, which were led on several occasions by Pete Seeger, a life-long friend of the Lincoln veterans, who recorded many of them for his iconic 1944 album, Songs Of The Lincoln Battalion. Barbez draws on avant-rock, contemporary classical, and folk music styles such as cumbia and flamenco to reinvent iconic songs for a new generation of listeners. The album features clarinetist Peter Hess (Philip Glass Ensemble), Theremin virtuoso Pamelia Stickney (David Byrne), marimba and vibraphone player Danny Tunick (The Clean), guitarist Dan Kaufman (Rebecca Moore), violinist Catherine McRae (The Quavers), bassist Peter Lettre (Shearwater), and drummer John Bollinger (Sway Machinery); with vocalist Velina Brown (San Francisco Mime Troupe) and special guests Dafna Naphtali on background vocals and Sebastiaan Faber on trumpet. It's the first Barbez record since 2013's acclaimed Bella Ciao. Dan Kaufman, the bandleader of Barbez, moonlights as a journalist. Over the course of reporting, he got to know many veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, including the last surviving one, Del Berg, who died at 100 in 2016. "A Las Barricadas" is a fragment of an interview Kaufman conducted with Berg the year before he died. "Viva La Quince Brigade", the Brigade's unofficial anthem, features a fragment of an interview with Abe Osheroff, a legendary Lincoln vet and life-long activist. In October 1938, the International Brigades were sent home. Five months later, Madrid, the Republic's last holdout, fell. Some half million Spanish Republican exiles fled by foot across the border, settling for a time in damp, primitive internment camps on the beaches of southern France. Their plight -- and defiance -- are captured in the image on this album's cover, taken by the renowned war photographer Robert Capa in 1939. Mixed by Martin Bisi (Swans, Sonic Youth, John Zorn); Live engineering performed by Damon Whittemore (Paul McCartney, Andrew Bird); Includes extensive liner notes by award-winning author Adam Hochschild.
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