Riki Rose

Riki Rose works mainly in Yiddish, and although she also works as a comedian, music is the larger part of her output. Her first real audience came as a teenager, when the comedian Leah Forster, judging a talent contest at a Bais Yaakov school, invited her to sing at a concert at Brooklyn College.

She calls her sound soul, and within the Yiddish-speaking world she is often set beside the singer Motty Steinmetz. The songs draw on her own story of moving between the Satmar world she was raised in and secular life: Galus Blues deals with living between those two identities, and Utem Arein Utem Arois and Vus vilstu, muter, hobn? are also part of her catalogue. She has written as well, contributing articles to The Forward.