Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig reps Jewish roots

Vampire Weekend is having a moment. The band recently appeared on MTV’s “Unplugged” surrounded by drippy candles and a plunky string section and the adorable rockers performed live on the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brian on Monday.

It make sense — the buzzy Afropop indie rockers just released their new album Contra yesterday to early high praise from the blogosphere and beyond. Their sophomore effort comes two short years after the band's revered and jeered self-titled debut record.

Music site Pitchfork.com gave the new album a 8.6 out of 10 and wrote: "It's like they've spent the past two years building a bionic version of the band-- not only brighter and tighter, but weirder. The group nurtures its eccentricities and the result is a record full of them: Ezra's stretchy, dynamic voice; Rostam's fussy but colorful arrangements, packed with lots of orchestral confetti; and a sound that spans an increasingly multicultural array of genres, from American synth-pop to reggae, ska, calypso and Afro-pop."

They are indeed critics’ darlings, but the band has also suffered backlash in the past for their apparent upper-crust upbringing (loafers-wearing, Columbia University-attending “white boys”).

(Jewish) lead vocalist Ezra Koenig acknowledged these claims in an interview with the Guardian last week:
He didn't go to New York's prestigious Columbia University because his family is wealthy. Quite the contrary: "My dad grew up in a working-class Jewish neighborhood, and I got a scholarship from my dad's union to go to college. I went there to get an education, not as an extension of privilege." He also took the band's "whiteness" to task, reminding everyone that "the two main writers in the band are Jewish and Persian, which is a pretty broad definition of 'whiteness.'"

While the Brooklyn-based singer only occasionally discusses his Jewish background in interviews, in last month’s Spin magazine he alluded to it in a pictorial tour of his apartment, which included an old Zabar’s mug:

“[Food shop] Zabar's is a lasting symbol of oldschool New York Jewish culture. I was born about 20 blocks away on the Upper West Side, but my parents quickly decamped for the suburbs. Now their kids are back in the city. Classic story.”

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