The Klezmatics didn’t approach “Deportee” as a cover. They approached it as a responsibility. The Grammy-winning Yiddish band shares their stunning reimagining of Woody Guthrie’s “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” today, featuring Grammy-nominated vocalist, songwriter, and producer Sofia Rei, as the second single from their upcoming album ‘We Were Made For These Times,’ due May 1 via Shamus Records. Nearly 80 years after Guthrie wrote it to restore names and dignity to migrant workers reduced to statistics, the song keeps returning to the moment we’re living in with renewed urgency.
The version The Klezmatics and Rei have built is trilingual, weaving English, Yiddish, and Spanish through a shared musical tradition that spans klezmer, Latin American rhythms, and diasporic memory. Band member Lorin Sklamberg puts it plainly: “I never imagined that an 80-year-old song would mean so much more in these challenging times.” Rei adds that the collaboration felt like “weaving many strands of resistance into a shared voice across cultures and borders.” The accompanying live video captures their time in the studio, with an additional video featuring Nora Guthrie exploring the track’s historical weight and its connection to the present day.
‘We Were Made For These Times,’ out on International Workers’ Day, draws from protest songwriters including Guthrie, Holly Near, Dovid Edelstadt, and Chaim Zhitlovsky, addressing migration, labor, war, belonging, and collective responsibility. The album brings together an extraordinary cast, including gospel powerhouse Joshua Nelson, the Lavender Light Gospel Choir, Crimean Tatar guitar virtuoso Enver İzmaylov, jazz visionaries William Parker and James Brandon Lewis, Janis Siegel of The Manhattan Transfer, and Colombian percussion collective La Manga.
The Klezmatics have been pushing klezmer forward since emerging from New York City’s East Village in 1986, fusing Yiddish song with punk energy, gospel intensity, jazz improvisation, and global rhythms. They remain the only klezmer act ever to win a Grammy, taking home Best Contemporary World Music Album for ‘Wonder Wheel – Lyrics by Woody Guthrie.’ Thirteen albums, five continents, and now their most urgent statement yet.
A North American tour runs May through August, with stops in Washington D.C., Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Brooklyn, and beyond.
Tour Dates:
May 16 – Theatre J, Washington, DC
May 20 – The Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries, St. Louis, MO
May 21 – City Winery Chicago, Chicago, IL
May 28 – City Winery Boston, Boston, MA
June 2 – City Winery Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
June 6 – Los Angeles, CA (TBD)
June 7 – Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
June 20 – Crown Hill Theatre, Brooklyn, NY
June 21 – The Falcon, Marlboro, NJ
July 12 – Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music, Amherst, MA
August 14-15 – JetLAG Festival, Fort Ann, NY