Oi Va Voi

Oi Va Voi
Oi Va Voi at a concert in Cambridge, September 2009
Background information
Origin	London, England
Genres	Alternative
Years active	2000–present<br /> Insert non-formatted text here
Labels	Outcaste, V2
Associated acts	KT Tunstall
Website	[1]
Members	Josh Breslaw Matt Jury Steve Levi Michael Vinaver David Orchant
Past members	Nik Ammar Sophie Solomon Lemez Lovas Leo Bryant

Oi Va Voi is a British band that takes its name from a Yiddish-derived exclamation popular in modern Hebrew meaning, approximately, "Oh, dear!" The band formed in London, England, in the year 2000. Their sound draws on Jewish music from both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions, including both klezmer and Judaeo-Spanish music, Eastern European music, as well as contemporary electronic music.

The London scene of the late nineties was a melting pot of world music genres and scenes that were beginning to coalesce around dance music, propelled and facilitated in part by the early days of the internet and to a great extent by the efforts of DJ's and broadcasters such as Charlie Gillett and Gilles Peterson. The story of the band's genesis started in the two cities of Oxford and London, with Jonathan Walton aka Lemez Lovas meeting Josephine Burton then bringing in Steve Levi and Sophie Solomon and later Leo Bryant whilst in Oxford studying. Then when the band moved to London Josh Breslaw joined the line up, followed guitarist Nik Ammar. Within a year the first line up started to form and the band found a fertile young jewish urban arts scene to grow in. London has long been home to a thriving Jewish community, whose predominantly Ashkenazy character had been defined by the waves of Yiddish speaking refugees pouring out of Ukraine and the Pale of Settlement after the Russian Tsarist Pogroms. The cultural character of this community were the backgrounds of its individual members, who had all descended from this East European Jewry. It is this sanguine, klezmer infused approach to melody that fused with their own millennial urban approach to rhythms, beats and songwriting that made them capture the pivot of the ages with the turning of the millennium.