[HANASHIR:6714] article on "cool" Jewish music

[Rachelle and Howard Shubert <notfranz...>]

      Hi friends,

      My rabbi thoughtfully sent this article to me and I thought of sharing it 
with you.  I have sendt it in the body of the e-mail since many prefer not to 
open attachments.

      Rachelle Shubert
        
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      Making Judaism Cool
        Jonathan Schorsch

        I sit listening to the newest and skankiest dub beat, bass thumping, 
high reverb shimmering, cool horns sliding around the syncopation, the chorus 
droning:

          Slaughter, slaughter, they want to slaughter em
          Slaughter, slaughter, watch out murderer.

        The "em" is slurred enough to be "us." The singer drawls in deep 
Jamaican accents, the words strobe-lighted by the heavy reverb:

          I want to tell you sometin about my granfader,
          my granfader was a concentration camp survivor
          taken from his home in the second world war
          separated from his family by the Nazis mister
          and herded like an animal into a cattle car.

        Is this some Rasta philosemite? No, only a recent CD by a collection of 
New York's hottest Jewish musicians. Doing the holocaust as Jamaican dub, it 
struck me, marked the quintessence of a near decade of making Judaism cool.

        Already in the mid-1990s, when living in Jerusalem, I noticed that the 
ultra-religious radio stations played all sorts of updated songs that were 
little more than covers of tunes from cool genres-usually from Africa or its 
diaspora-with words from the Bible or the like. The last decade has also 
witnessed the rise of the heavy metal Hasidic rock of Yossi Piamenta, the 
Jewish rap of Blood of Abraham, Rebbe Soul, the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars, 
and the whole lower East side avant-garde Jewish music scene: the Klezmatics, 
John Zorn, the Radical Jewish Culture/Tzadik label, etc. A Reggae Passover disk 
came out a few years back, while an announcement for a Reggae Chanukah disk 
popped up recently in my e-mail. Even the stodgy Israeli Duo Re'emim did a 
hip-hop/DJ-mix cover of the traditional Ashkenazic Rosh Hashanah melodies.

        This borrowing approach has a long history in music, Jewish and 
otherwise, and especially so in Ladino and Hasidic music, many of whose tunes 
originated in secular, non-Jewish contexts (for instance, as drinking songs). 
The Hasidim sought to elevate the fallen sparks hidden within the melodies by 
attaching them to words that called forth the holiest qualities. In the 
twentieth century, popular Jewish music also went in search of the newest 
fashion, in search of making the old new and the global local, like the tangos 
played by Polish Jewish orchestras in the 1920s, or the American "klezmer" 
musicians in the first part of this century who invented "authentic" old world 
Jewish music by updating it with thoroughly American instruments and styles.

        Today, post-baby-boomers, alive to ethnicity and the rise of 
religiosity since the 1980s, have come around to appreciating the arts of their 
own ethnic culture. The movement of ba'alei teshuvah (those who have "returned" 
to Jewish observance) has shifted the demographics of the institutional 
orthodox world such that the young yeshivah-bochers can groove quite easily to 
the secular, cool, ethnic riddims of their sinful youths.

        Indeed, such grooves typify the general trend of making Judaism cool. 
Just think of Madonna and Roseanne studying kabbalah, radical Jewish culture 
(Tatooed Jew, etc.), Carlebach followers and fans, the hip currency of Sephardi 
and Mizrahi music, the style of Chabad missionizing (not to mention the 
popularity of the Chabad telethon), a Jewish lounge club in New York named 
Makor (Source). It's not just that Judaism and things Jewish are "in," though 
that is part of it. No, we are being told that things Jewish-traditionally very 
uncool-are actually cool. Some Jews are even acting as if it's cool to be 
Jewish. An Upper West Side paper reported that Friday nights at shul are as 
popular now as discos! People are converting to Judaism right and left; in some 
synagogues on the West coast converts to Judaism make up 30 percent or more of 
the congregation. Indeed, if one looks closely one sees that Jewish cool 
signifies a kind of amusing and perverse but much needed tikkun or repair for 
Judaism and our culture at large.

        Still, isn't there something a little wrong here? Cool marks ironic 
distance, detachment, and anti-establishmentarianism, an overemphasis on style. 
"Mama, I wanna make rhythm, don't wanna make music," crooned Cab Calloway in 
1937 New York, as he slid into a mock ethnic voice and scenario (a boy playing 
rhapsodies on a violin), before exploding into a crescendo of scat ("noise" 
according to the contemporary mainstream understanding of music and taste). 
"Pop" music, television and Hollywood host, if not breed, irony and sarcasm as 
a weltanschaung. Meanwhile, observant Judaism for the most part entails utter 
seriousness, without much room for humor, sarcasm, or irony, especially in the 
ultra-orthodox world. There would seem to be some tension, to say the least, 
between hip-hop and tehillim (psalms), no? Doesn't some inherent semiotics of 
heavy metal preclude it from serving the seriously sacred?
        According to the Jerusalem-based paper Kol Ha-Ir some years ago, many 
ultra-orthodox rabbis of Me'ah She'arim thought so and came out against the 
rock and roll religious music, which had become popular enough to keep open a 
large, allegedly disruptive music store on one of the ultra-orthodox 
neighborhood's main streets. It made sense that many of the late-night 
religious DJs in Israel broadcast while obviously stoned. Though supposedly 
radically different in content, the fit between the pre- and post-teshuvah 
life-styles appeared stylistically continuous. They had traded in their black 
leather for the stylistics of black suits and fedoras; mohawks for the myriad 
of specific pe'ot styles, each representing a different Hasidic group. The 
ornate, patterned, textured chintz vests of the Hasidic rebbes-the fabric 
origin of the derogatory adjective "chintzy"-now signified the height of cool. 
(Remember the haute-fashion rip-off of Hasidic garb from a few years back?) No 
surprise that the rebbes worried that the seepage of the pre-teshuvah life into 
the ba'al-teshuvah life would threaten to undermine the entire point of the 
transformation.

        A close look at two of the recent releases by John Zorn's Tzadik label 
provides a fascinating glimpse into the paradoxes of cool Judaism. Trumpet 
player Steven Bernstein's disc Diaspora Soul (1999) features a small postmodern 
Latin jazz ensemble belting out versions of Ani Ma'amin, Manishtanah, Rock of 
Ages, Roumania, Roumania, and others. The playing is both straight and ironic, 
funky and funny; Bernstein blows a mean trumpet. In a revealing chain of 
associations, Bernstein describes the sound he sought:

        Not just the rhythms, but the phrasing and air flow of the R&B players 
are a continuation of the [New Orleans] marching style [...] This led me to 
thinking not just about a New Orleans sound, but rather the Gulf Coast sound, 
encompassing Texas and Cuba-and the last part of the Gulf Coast was Miami. And 
who retired to Miami? The most popular Cuban export of the '50s was the cha-cha 
[...] who loves a cha-cha more than the Jews? And the final piece of the 
grail-the hora bass pattern-one, two-and, and-four-and-is the first half of the 
clave, the heart of Afro-Cuban music.

        Bernstein's music is clearly a loving tribute. Note, however, that Jews 
here are only the recipients, the listeners to the great ethnic musics, not 
their creators.

        The tension between the disparate elements in Bernstein's music 
parallels the tension in the problematic of ethnic identity itself at play in 
the production of this music and the manufacture of this disk. The Cuban 
percussion, languid dance-groove bass, vibe-like electric piano, or swelling 
organ underpin the Jewish melodies which make up the horn themes. These 
melodies, however, are more icing than cake; Bernstein's soloing, for instance, 
only occasionally takes up allusions to Jewish music.

        Bernstein has (purposefully? ironically?) recreated the overall feeling 
of exactly those Fifties and Sixties Jewish groups (Mickey Katz, the Barry 
Sisters) who incorporated "exotic" elements. He makes fun of (and pays respect 
to) them just as these groups had had fun with (and made fun of?) the "exotic" 
musics they were borrowing and even the Jewish music they were simultaneously 
transforming, down to the cheapo arrangements, "tacky" production values, often 
uninspired lounge-music tracks-amusing and almost desperate efforts to make 
cheesy songs cool. Is this the music that Jews who love cha-cha produced? Yet 
the playing is great and the concept often works; Bernstein has forged a 
unified sound and it constitutes convincing Jewish music. But the effect cannot 
be listened to unironically. Perhaps all this has to do with Bernstein's 
comment about being asked to do a "Jewish" album:

        How does a Jewish musician who has spent his entire life studying 
"other" musical cultures make a "Jewish" record? How does one make a "Jewish" 
record, when by nature, all of one's music is already "Jewish"?

        Another new Tzadik release provides one answer to Bernstein's question.

        Keter (1999), the first disc from Zohar, an ensemble made up of 
eclectic pianist Uri Caine, singer/hazzan Aaron Bensoussan, and other adept 
players of cutting-edge music scenes in the States and Israel, presents a 
seamless DJ-mix of Mizrahi and Sephardi trance music over extended renditions 
of standards such as Eli Eli, Avraham Avinu, and many more. The Arabic 
improvisational singing, ladino ballads, deep syncopated percussion, throbbing 
bass lines, avant-garde jazz piano, samples, and tape manipulation all come and 
go in the overarching mix, constituting equal, interchangeable elements from 
the databank of world music sounds. Yet this music does not sound ironic. The 
titles, intensity, and ecstasy all aim to produce a Jewish answer to Nusrat Ali 
Fatah Khan, Yoruba street percussion, or techno: Jewish music is the primal 
thang, the oldest and most up-to-date, connected to the grooves of the universe.
        The disc's unintended irony resides in the degree to which the music's 
features come from "other" musical cultures. This shouldn't surprise: the Zohar 
and Kabbalah itself represent utterly miscegenated texts, a seamless mix of 
Hellenistic, Arabic, Christian, and Jewish elements. Another unintended irony 
is that normalizing Jewish music, making it just one among all other ethnic 
grooves/styles, is done at the cost of accepting the marketing of 
multiculturalism, the manufacture of cultures. In some ways the music on Keter 
is what I imagine the just-opened Jewish "club" Makor in New York must be 
like-I've only heard from a sister-in-law who was there herself-with its three 
stories of Jewish happenings, a bar and strictly kosher food, hip world music 
imported via the mavens from the lower East side, mosh pit above, shiurim 
below, a mind-body yosher (balance) that would do the Maharal proud.
        Convivencia, man! Judaism for the new millennium! But what does it 
really mean when lyrics yearning for the speedy rebuilding of the Temple float 
over the beautiful explosions of Afro-Cuban drumming, a drumming (with its own 
lyrics, by the way) whose rhythms, like those of Haiti, Brazil, and elsewhere, 
derive from worship devoted to deities/heroes of Yoruba or Fon or Nago origin, 
and energize the Afro-Cuban religion known as Santeria. The ironies here 
abound. Does using this beat imply that the artists condone the Santeria 
practice - so controversial in parts of the United States-of animal sacrifice? 
They should, since they sing for the revival of the Temple-based cult of animal 
sacrifice in Judaism. Do they really want the speedy rebuilding
        of the Temple and return of the sacrificial system? (Do we, when we 
sing this song at wedding parties?) One can certainly dance to it, but I wonder 
.

        The cool Jewish trip could only be American. On one side, the roots of 
Jewish cool lie in New Age terminology and attitude: positivity and openness to 
the non-modern, to the non-rational. But New Age was never cool. It is a 
pretend religion for people with pretend traditions. The homogenized, 
boundary-less music of New Age well reflects its sanitized, denatured, fake 
solution to personal and world problems. New Age is goofy, yet self-serious, 
with no sense of irony. On the other side, Jewish cool derives from cool 
aesthetes, from the beat poets to their progeny of the Sixties. These were 
self-serious, adolescent rebels with a cause, goofy only unintentionally. But 
their extreme anti-establishment cool left no escape from alienation and anomie.

        One brand of Jewish cool that seems to escape this existential angst is 
the ecstatic neo-Hasidic style developed by the late Shlomo Carlebach. That 
Carlebach style is a variety of cool can readily be seen from its staunch 
hippie anti-fashion hierarchy, its rainbow people politics, and its ease with 
way-long ecstatic praying and dancing, a product of its followers' affection 
for way-long guitar and drum solos. Carlebach style owes much to the 
optimistic, cheerful searching of New Age religiosity, but it derives as well 
from white working class rebellion and from a hippie back-to-the-land spirit, 
with roots in serious personal and political tikkun: Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, 
Gil Scott Heron. It's more a whole-person Jungian-balance, caring-people kind 
of trip. (This might be particularly true for Jewish boys and men, whose 
self-involved energies adulating cool can thus be channeled into 
community-oriented, world-healing activities. A great deal of overlap binds 
Jewish renewal with the men's movement.) Carlebach followers favor a 
Sephardi/kabbalistic/neo-hasidic nusach for prayer, a rebellion against the 
insipid Protestant harmonies of American Conservative and Reform synagogues and 
homes. Carlebach followers are very sincere. A Carlebachey approach maintains 
interest in the ritual efficacy of particular traditions, all of them, and is 
never mocking.

        Yet even Carlebach style is not free from the ironies of sincerity. The 
very passion of Carlebach followers can lead to sometimes amusing, sometimes 
unsettling results. Their search for an "authentic" Judaism has led many to 
embrace some less-than-savory aspects of Judaism because of their seeming 
"authenticity." A friend of mine, for example, an inveterate hippy carpenter, 
pot-smoker and all, is building a piece of the ritual furniture needed for the 
third Temple planned by some extreme nationalist and ultra-orthodox groups. 
Friends of friends apparently hold the "contract" for making the harps to be 
used therein by the Levitical choirs. 
        Likewise, I am dismayed to hear that in Israel now Rabbi Carlebach's 
songs and image have been usurped by right-wing settlers. I have been told that 
yeshivah-bochers belted out Shlomo niggunim at a recent rally against 
dismantling West bank settlements. I am not surprised by this: anyone can claim 
pieces of discourse, and Carlebach himself had a strain of nationalism. But 
it's one thing to sell tekhelet, to market "authentic" ancient-style weddings 
or biblical clothing, and quite another to make mysticism into militarism by 
other means. Jewish passion doesn't always lead to ugly nationalism. Without 
any irony, however, without some critical, skeptical attitude, Carlebachy cool 
readily becomes too serious, a tool for the right, and thus no longer cool at 
all. Can Jewish cool be ironic and serious all at once? Can it survive if it's 
not?

        A recently-released anthology of previously-untranslated stories of the 
Ba'al Shem Tov contains a tale in which the wonder rabbi cures a Jew who was 
passing as a hedonistic Polish noble of his "negativity and insidious 
addictions." The tale explains to some degree the relationship between cool and 
Judaism, at least in ba'al teshuvah circles. In his healing speech, addressed 
both to and not to the disguised Jew, the Besht says:

        Anybody who really wants to progress on the spiritual path must look 
into his very own soul and see clearly what is stopping him from getting close 
to God. In my experience there are two traits that obstruct one from truly 
proceeding on the path. The first one is irrational anger, and the other is 
sarcasm.

        In this Hasidic view, sarcasm, a form of irony, simply must be 
eliminated. It is easy to understand why. Irony and especially sarcasm imply 
disdain, haughtiness, mockery, negation, and act as corrosive agents. Spiritual 
Judaism, even of the cool variety inspired by pseudo-kabbalah, entails a 
voluntary move away from irony. There is to be no more camp for Madonna, who 
made her name camping and vamping Catholicism. Now, I am told in all 
seriousness, Roseanne gives shiurim at the Kabbalah Learning Center. Even cool 
Jewish culture that is openly ironic seems to be so these days only 
affectionately (I'm thinking of the Bay Area group Charming Hostess' covers of 
eastern European and klezmer tunes or even of Israeli comedian Gil Kopetch).

        It all makes sense. People are desperate to escape the postmodern 
condition, which is fundamentally marked by an ironic stance toward the world. 
Neo-hasidism's vision of traditional Judaism's no nonsense approach to the 
world offers Jewish kids who grew up in the most assimilated, up-to-date, 
worldly spheres a means of maintaining the stylistics of cool while escaping 
cool's alienation and disinterest. A world in which nothing matters or can be 
done is replaced by one in which every action makes a difference and saves 
worlds.

        Cool Judaism has enabled young Jews to express ethnic pride in 
themselves and in Judaism, now that they've discovered that the "true" Judaism 
repressed by their bourgeois parents is ethnic, oppressed and Other. Such 
"ethnicity" has allowed young Jews to express sincerity in acceptable cool 
fashion (reggae, hip hop, cutting-edge klezmer) since, unlike whites, oppressed 
Others are permitted to be sincere, oppositional, searching and positive while 
fighting for cultural survival. And it has allowed Jews who have discovered the 
transcendent in "other" cultures to be open enough to themselves and others 
about their finding the transcendent "at home."

        Through the stylistics of cool Judaism, the rebellion manufactured and 
harnessed for marketing the rebel youth culture is channeled into a rebellion 
against the very things producing these styles and attracting young people to 
them in the first place: the secular culture industry, bourgeois living, 
individualism, emotional deadness. Hopefully. One cannot forget the extent to 
which even seemingly authentic efforts of cultural resistance, "the relics of 
counterculture," as Thomas Frank writes, "reek of affectation and phoniness, 
the leisure-dreams of white suburban children." All too often cool Judaism 
harnesses transgression for the sake of mere posture, even for profits. It 
remains to be seen whether cool Judaism is just another style to consume or 
whether it helps leads to an authentic and lasting personal rebellion against 
materialism, against abused worldly power, against the destructive cult of the 
individual and the ego, the source of the need to be cool.

        Judaism will survive cool. Cool might just survive Judaism. After all 
else is said, the two new Tzadik disks make fantastic music for simchas! The 
question of whether they can survive together, however, depends in each case on 
the fundamental formula contained in Pierre Bourdieux' theory of the "habitus," 
as articulated by Duke Ellington: it ain't what you do but the way that you do 
it. Passion and the search for "authenticity" cannot become a substitute for 
thinking, for the eternal effort to juggle the necessary opposites of God and 
human, devotion and critique, self-confidence and humility. Planning for the 
third Temple is not merely a larger equivalent of the drumming circles of men's 
groups. The dangers of soul without mind continue to be very real. This said, 
however, the potential power of cool Jewish culture remains strong. If cool 
Judaism helps young people to avoid the Orwellian carelessness, ignorance and 
idiocy induced by the culture industry, it makes a damn good noble lie. 
      
          
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