The song is Lecha Dodi, the Shabbat evening prayer — sounded over a Yiddishised version of the Beatles classic Girl.

It is just one of the many unconventional songs of the band, whose vocalists rap their own lyrics in Hebrew, Hungarian and English.

“It is modern Jewish music because it is influenced by Jewish things, but it’s not the replaying of old Jewish songs,” said Daniel Kardos, 34, a composer and guitarist who plays with HaGesher and several other bands in Budapest.

“I pick up many things and mix them.”

HaGesher is one of about half a dozen bands in Budapest – a city of European Jewish cool blending jazz, hip hop, rap and reggae with Israeli pop and traditional Jewish folk tunes and liturgy to form an eclectic urban sound.

“It’s a big mix of contemporary Jewish musical identity,” said vocalist Adam Schoenberger, the son of a rabbi.

“All of us find Jewish culture very important.

Hagesher is a platform for us to articulate musically our different musical interpretation of Jewish cultural heritage.”

As the program director of the popular Siraly club, whose dimly lit basement stage is a regular venue for HaGesher and other groups, Schoenberger, 30, is a leader in Budapest’s Jewish youth scene.

He is also one of the organisers of Bankito sometimes referred to as ‘Jewstock’ — a youth-oriented, three-day Jewish culture festival, which starts on Thursday on the shores of Bank Lake, north of Budapest.

Bankito includes concerts, exhibitions, performances, workshops, seminars and lectures, a poetry slam, sports events, films and Jewish and interfaith religious observances.

Music is a highlight of Bankito.

HaGesher, the Daniel Kardos Quartet and other Jewish bands such as Nigun and Triton Electric Oktopus will perform.

“We are at a fascinating moment in Jewish music: it is hip again,” said Jack Zaientz, author of the online Teruah Jewish music blog.

“There is an amazing gang of musicians who are young, smart, urban and Jewish and making their Jewish identities a core part of their music and stage identities.”

The Budapest musicians take their cues from Jewish bands in North America, Paris, London and elsewhere that also experiment with new forms and fusions.

Among their models are John Zorn, the avant-garde composer who has promoted “Radical Jewish Culture” on his Tzadik label since 1995, DJ Socalled and Balkan Beat Box, Orthodox reggae star Matisyahu and rapper Y-Love.

Trumpeter Frank London, who regularly tours Europe with the Klezmatics and other bands, has had a particularly strong impact with his mash-ups of klezmer, Balkan brass and even gospel.

“Everyone is influenced by Frank London through the Klezmatics,” said Bob Cohen, a Hungarian-American musician and writer who has lived in Budapest since the 1980s.

“But another big influence in Hungary is Israeli raves on Tel Aviv beaches.

“I played at Jewstock a couple of years ago.

“People there had an academic interest in klezmer, but what they want is to go out and rave.”

In some ways, Cohen said, the new Jewish music scene in Budapest developed as a reaction to a more traditional klezmer music scene that many young people now perceive as part of the stuffy mainstream establishment.

The Budapest Klezmer Band, for example, the city’s best-known Jewish music group, performs internationally in opera houses and concert halls as well as theatres and mainstream festivals.

Formed in 1990, the band also collaborates on elaborate klezmer stage productions and ballets.

“The new Jewish music scene is a party scene, not a concert scene and the older generation doesn’t relate to it,” Cohen added.

“In a way, they want an art form that won’t be understood by the traditional Jewish establishment.”