Schwarz teamed up again with Senders to produce an even stronger expression of his brilliant poly-cultural sensibility. As a result, this album is a powerful cycle of songs reflecting the hopes and dreams of particular individuals: an old man’s nostalgia for the village culture of his youth, a dishwashing Mexican migrant’s lament, the reflections of an émigré taxi driver, or Schwarz’s own retelling of his parents’ immigration from Italy to the United States. 

Willy takes the listener on a journey through time and space, singing in 9 different languages, playing 24 authentic instruments, and retracing the musical sources of the Jewish Diaspora– from the archaic strains of an Ethiopian fiddle to a merry Irish ditty, from the mystics of Yemen to the shepherd’s pipe of the Asian steppes, from the yearnings of the Jews of the Malabar coast of South India to those of the Hassidim of Eastern Europe.