Yemen Blues deserves all the attention [Video]

Something unusual was happening at Toronto’s Koerner Hall.

To outside observers it might have looked like this: A mature, sophisticated audience, one that had started the evening by listening in its habitual, mild, sophisticated audience way, had suddenly risen to its feet mid-song, hands stretched over heads in a cacophony of clapping.

The architect of this raucous Royal Conservatory display was one Ravid Kahalani, a sinewy, braided, longhaired man in a shiny metallic suit who commanded the stage with such charismatic verve that almost everyone in attendance, including a few grandmother-aged participants, began to dance in their seats with enough energy to power a few windmills. A Brahms matinee performance this was not.

Kahalani is perhaps better known as the driving force behind Yemen Blues, an Israeli world music ensemble that has generated enthusiastic underground buzz since they made their debut at the Babel Med festival in Marseilles three years ago.

On Oct. 26, Kahalani and his dynamic …