"I enjoyed the music very much... nice arrangements and readings of klezmer classics." John Zorn "...well grounded in the tradition but also well planted in their place (Mexico) and time (now). A fine woody clarinet over tockity drums, acoustic and electric guitars, and bass. Wailing and soulful, jangly and full of life." Jack Zaientz "CD of the week" by Mexico's presidential weekly press bulletin in March 20th 2009. Somewhere around mid 2007 a happy group of four fellow musicians got together in downtown Guadalajara to play klezmer. The quartet would have been called Four Fake Jews if only the Argentinean guitarist (Sibila Knobel) had not recently learned of her Jewish background. Why did we ever get together to do this is kind of a mystery, but we do know that clarinetist Nathalie Braux was an accomplished klezmorim in France before starting the tour du monde that brought her to this 6 million inhabitants shtetl of Mexico. About the other two klezmorims we know that Luis Arreola (bass) had no previous contact with the music but that he is one of the best bassists in town, was eager to play new stuff and is a great guy to be with. As of myself, Diego Escobar (drums and percussion), I’m a brought-up jazz musician that fell in love with Jewish music thanks to experimental Jewish music from New York. The first year of rehearsals and public performances was very interesting in two ways. Musically we were getting to know each other klezmer-wise and trying to blend into this beautiful music all those exogenous elements that we thought would make us a unique klezmer band (and we still think that way). So practices went from taking a Chacarera –a traditional Argentinean folk rhythm- approach to Reb Dovidls Nigun, to rockin’ out on a clarinet solo during a fast polka and from that to arranging soft interlude with East-European reminiscences for Moldavian Hora. Socially, so to speak, the first year was interesting because we came upon the fact that Klezmer was an entirely unknown genre in our town. Devastating if we took it pessimistically, but challenging and exciting if we ventured to hit the bars with our music and let people know there’s a lot of driving-rocking-energetic music to be played and heard outside the regular live-music-at-a-bar kind of show. Sherele’s seceond year of existence was marked by a series of important shows in our hometown Guadalajara. First we were invited to play the main stage of Guadalajara’s “Fête de la musique” in front of over 1000 people. It was already strange that a new band that played an unknown Jewish genre in an aggressively catholic city got programmed on that main stage, but it was wholly unexpected for us to see people dancing like mad to our music, cheering, jumping and head-banging to our interpretations of classic klezmer tunes. So perhaps Sherele had the potential to play beyond live music joints and make it happen? It did. The success of this public, free, open air, concert of the Fête de la Musique led the band to be programmed for the third edition of Mumu Fest, the world music festival that happens yearly in Guadalajara. Our performance was next to last and yes, it sounds arrogant for us to say, but the audience was exhausted from all the dancing when the closing act came up. That show was so good that we got a record deal with Sonidos y Sabores del Mundo, an enthusiastic company that agreed to publish and distribute the album we had finished mastering only a month earlier. Our album is called Oy Mame Shein, Pickles Chiles and Jrein because mothers in Mexico are as big of a deal as they are in Jewish culture and because Pickles, Chiles and Jrein synthesize what we think our music tastes and sounds like: Bitter, Sweet, Sour, Hot and Spicy.