Convicts Captivated by Folk Musicians : Arts: Chino prisoners clap along to Yiddish classics in one of the most unusual cross-cultural events associated with the L.A. Festival.

Johnny Cash has played San Quentin and other state prisons. So has B.B. King. But an Eastern European klezmer band?

The offbeat pairing of hardened inmates and traditional Jewish folk musicians--one of the farthest-reaching cross-cultural events associated with the ongoing Los Angeles Festival--took place Saturday afternoon in the parched main yard of the California Institution for Men.

More than 200 enthusiastic inmates, serving time for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to assault with a deadly weapon, applauded in rhythm as the eight-member Ellis Island Band performed such Yiddish classics as “Frailich Fun de Chuppah” and “Der Greena Kozina.”

“They got it going on,” yelled inmate Gilbert Tellez, 27, of El Monte, as strains of clarinet, accordion and violin wafted through the smoggy air. “It’s different. But it’s good to hear different things.”

Also on the bill was an inmate band, Jazz Workshop, which jammed with the klezmorim on Grover Washington Jr.’s “Mr. Magic.”

The prison band’s leader, Sylvester Henry, had initially suggested that Ellis Island join in on a tune called “Whip Appeal” by rhythm and blues artist Baby Face. However, when violinist Aaron Shifrin, 70, heard the name Baby Face, all he knew from was the old standard, as in “You’ve Got the Cutest Little . . .”

The unconventional afternoon was also highlighted by an impromptu bare-chested polka by inmate George Romo to the strains of an Eastern European folk song. “I was stationed in the Army in Germany for three years--that’s where I learned it,” Romo explained. “Will this help me get out of here quicker?”

The performance by the Los Angeles-based band, which includes a Century City attorney and two recent Russian emigres, was one of four shows scheduled this week in Southland state prisons as part of an L.A. Festival offshoot titled the “Broken Clock Festival.” In upcoming days, the series--its name generated from an inmate’s poem about the manner in which time stands still for prisoners--will also feature salsa performances at Chino and jazz at the California Rehabilitation Center at Norco.

The L.A. Festival has aimed to transport tastes of ethnic cultures to diverse areas of the Los Angeles Basin--an American Indian powwow in San Pedro, Thai folk opera in Alhambra, Australian Aboriginal dancers in Los Angeles’ downtown financial district. But none of the events has proved more unusual than Saturday’s avant-garde-meets-prison-guard affair.

“I thought klezmer music would create a very positive mood and would show good musicianship,” said Tom Skelly, the prison’s artist facilitator, who chose Ellis Island from a list of willing performers.

Bandleader Barry Fisher, 47, said Ellis Island has played in settings ranging from Brentwood bar mitzvahs to a Roy Clark testimonial in Nashville during the last decade. Never before, the accordion player said, has it “entertained before such a captive audience.”

“This music was brought over to America beginning in the late 1800s with the waves of Jewish immigrants facing persecution,” said Fisher, a Century City lawyer who specializes in 1st Amendment legal cases. “The people in Chino are also alienated from society.”

“If part of the L.A. Festival is to bring the unique from afar to Los Angeles to raise the artistic consciousness, I think klezmer music does that.”

Regardless, Shifrin, who was wearing a white tuxedo shirt as he peered toward the cutoff-clad convicts, said he’d think twice before including his prison appearance on his musical curriculum vitae.

“How would it look if I were trying to play Vegas?” he smiled.