JazzFolk & World
Adhyâropa Records · 28 August 2026
“Loisaida Quickstep” opens the record with Brian Chase’s snare and Kenny Wollesen’s bass drum marking the military step, and the horns breaking formation at the first opportunity. It runs 3:51 and everything is already there: the discipline of a fife and drum corps, and eight New York musicians set on undoing it.
The repertoire is public domain, fife and drum music from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it was cut in a single session on 11 February, in the year the United States marks two hundred and fifty years of independence. London puts it this way: “Fife music is military music, so you would think it would subsume the individuality of the players. But our interpretations foreground individual voices.” He gives a second reason too: “It’s a refutation of the way ‘Americana’ has been categorized in racial terms.”
“Frog in de Well” (2:28) is the shortest track and the only one where an instrument from outside the corps gets in, Martin Shamoonpour’s Jew’s harp; Elijah Thomas’s piccolo works against Ron Caswell’s tuba. “I’ll Touzle Your Kurchy” (5:08) comes apart at the end into collective improvisation before returning to the theme, and “Farewell to Whiskey” (4:39) closes with Reut Regev’s trombone dragging the melody toward the blues.
Eight tracks, thirty-four minutes, and a line-up that doesn’t move: trumpet, trombone, tuba, piccolo, fiddle, washboard, snare and bass drum on every piece. The one moment where the colour really changes is that “Frog in de Well” with the Jew’s harp, which lasts two minutes and twenty-eight seconds and never comes back. On a record whose whole premise is making a repertoire everybody knows sound different, one piece of variation is short measure.
The record is credited to Frank London & The Loisaida Fife and Drum Corps. London came up through the Klezmer Conservatory Band and the Klezmatics. He produced this one himself, Thomas Lebioda recorded it and Danny Blume mastered it, and it came out on 28 August on Adhyâropa Records as catalogue number ÂR00194.
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Aina Torrents