Shantel and the international acclaimed artist Oz Almog presents on KOSHER NOSTRA an unparalleled journey back in time to the music clubs, vaudeville theatres and gambling casinos in the U.S.A. The sound can be described as wild mix of Swing, Jazz, Twist, Charleston and the adorable charm of Yiddish songs and ballads.

The idea of Jewish gangsters in America is not something that is deeply engrained in the popular imagination. Yet the character of Hyman Roth in Coppola‘s The Godfather is based on Meyer Lansky, one of the most colourful figures in the Jewish-American underworld. Films such as Billy Bathgate, Cotton Club, Once Upon a Time in America, The Godfather, Bugsy, Casino, Gangs of New York or the current HBO series Boardwalk Empire are a mix of legend, cliché, stereotype and historical fact. In Europe, especially, the widespread myth of a predominantly Italian mafia in America has long overshadowed the significance of Jewish gangsters. Yet nobody who looks into the history of the American mafia can deny the extent to which such figures as Meyer Lansky, Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, Dutch Schultz or Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter shaped the machinations of the underworld, along with the classic Sicilian godfathers. It is only in the past ten years or so that any light has been shed on this in Europe.

The artist Oz Almog addressed the issue in a high-profile exhibition featuring his own paintings together with police photographs, crime-scene sketches, newspaper articles and the biographies of the gangsters themselves.

Shantel, who actually wrote his undergraduate thesis at Frankfurt University on the topic of organised crime, has thoroughly researched the KOSHER NOSTRA and its influence on American musical culture, going to great and sometimes quite adventurous lengths to put together this anthology charting the hidden history of organised crime in America. The myth of KOSHER NOSTRA, mafia methods as .......
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