Josef Josef is the new project around French violinist Eric Slabiak, in which he, together with former Les Yeux Noirs band mates Frank Anastasio (guitar) and Darco Ivkovic (accordion), and supplemented with bassist Jérôme Arrighi and drummer Rémi Sanna, goes in search of his grandparents' Jewish-Eastern European roots. 'Josef Josef', or 'Yossel Yossel' in Yiddish, is a song originally recorded in 1923 by Nellie Casman, a Russian-born Jewish who defected to the United States to pursue a career as a singer and actress, and one of Eric's father's favorite tunes. In the track list of this self-titled debut, six songs from the Yiddish klezmer tradition by, among others, Polish-Israeli poet Abraham Sutzkever ('Unter Dayne Vayse Shtern'), actor and songwriter Chaim Tauber ('Sheyn Vi Di Levone'), and David Meyerowitz ('Vi Zaynen Mayne Zibn Gite Yur'), a Latvian Jew who migrated to America, Serbian gypsy music ('Sila Kale Bal', a cover of the eponymous song by Serbian gypsy king Saban Bajramovic, 'Zvecansko Kolo', 'Chelipe'), traditionals from Russia ('Gene Roma'), Romania (the instrumental 'Hora Lui Buca') and Moldova ('Opinca-Hora De Mana'), and with 'Josef Tanz' also one self-penned instrumental as a finale.