Black Ox Orkestar emerged from Montreal's fertile post-punk and independent music scene in the early 2000s, drawing together a quartet of musicians interested in connecting their Eastern European Jewish cultural heritage with their contemporary sensibilities. The band includes members from various other esteemed groups, such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sackville, bringing together a distinctive confluence of skills and influences. Their sound is characterized by a deeply resonant meld of traditional klezmer, Balkan, and Ashkenazi sounds, reinterpreted through the lens of modern experimental and political consciousness.

The music of Black Ox Orkestar is both a homage and a discovery; it is steeped in historical context but vibrates with relevance to the current era. Through albums like "Nisht Azoy" and "Ver Tanzt?" they've interpreted and re-crafted traditional Yiddish and Eastern European songs, infusing them with a haunting and often political urgency. After a significant hiatus, they returned to the music scene with their most recent tracks such as "Everything Returns" and "Viderkol (Echo)," which continue to explore these cross-cultural dialogues and the deep currents of diasporic Jewish music, further entrenching their impact on the global music community as guardians and innovators of a rich musical tradition.