Frank London & The Loisaida Fife and Drum Corps /
Touzle your kurchy

You are so in for a treat. It's Frank London's tribute to America's 250th Birthday Party, but it's also a tribute to the marching street bands that accompany so much of our activism these days (and which gather around the country in various "Honk!" festivals. Here in Boston that would be Indigenous People's Day—2nd weekend in October, Davis Square, Somerville). The band includes may of the Klezmer Brass AllStars, of course. The best play only with the best. And, Frank London is the best. Here, the best include fife and drum, as well.

The album opens with a "Loisaida Quickstep," a lovely New Orleans-style marching number with that added piccolo and snare. "Loisaida" is a nickname for New York's Lower East Side, now as redolent with Latin American beats as it once was filled with Yiddish-speaking revolutionists (and may well be, again). But there are also delightful stretches of Frank's wailing trumpet, as on "Empty Pockets," as he stretches the beats and takes us, for a brief few seconds, to another dimension. "My Babe" takes on a different urgency as a marching tune.

Frank describes this project this way: "It’s not only a window into history. Played in a new way, it’s something people can listen to on its own terms. But beyond that, it's a refutation of the way ‘Americana’ has been categorized in racial terms. This music wears its genealogy on its outer layer. On one hand you have the English, Irish, and Scottish influences, and on the other you have the clear influence of African music. The Loisaida Fife & Drum Corps’ interpretations make this music and New Orleans-style collective improvisation branches of the same tree; the meeting place where European folk melodies and African polyphony become one.... [I]n a way, we're performing military music with an anti-military aesthetic.”

Reviewed by Ari Davidow, 30-Jul-2026.

Songs

1. Loisaida Quickstep 3:51
2. Empty Pockets 4:50
3. My Babe 6:27
4. Frog in de Well 2:29
5. I’ll Touzle Your Kurchy 5:08
6. Waiting For 4:07
7. On the Road 3:07
8. Farewell to Whiskey 4:40