Re: Sabbath in Paradise (fwd)

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

>Also, the review's point about Marc Ribot were right on target.  His sound
>still is the least Jewish of the Rads to my ear, but his discussion really
>opened up the Jewish-NonJewish nature of Radical Jewish Music.   I was
>particularly moved by the holy manner in which he held his various guitars and
>his near Talmudic manner of discussing guitar playing over the generations.  

I feel like Jewish music in this context is almost a semiotic event:
The music may not have overt Jewish strains, but the conductor wore
tzitzis under his fatigues or whatever.

Yet, clearly, this speaks =Jewishly= to a lot of people. I mean, there
seem to be a lot of subscribers to this list who regularly scan the 
Radical Jewish label or JAM for new Jewish releases. What I'm missing
is how or why that connection works. When I listen to Kletka Red, for
instance, I can hear some Jewish music strains of music in his guitar,
but it seems so removed. Even more remote is, say, the band "Silver
Jews" which seems to have nothing Jewish about it, excepting the name
(although as a band, there is some interesting poetry and decent music).
At the same time, the label names imply that, just as klezmer spoke
to some people as a way into Jewish identity while sidestepping
mainstream Jewish culture, there is both Jewish identity being 
expressed here, and a particular view about Jewish identity as
expressed via public tokens, rather than (from my current perspective)
say, participating in Jewish cultural life. Or, perhaps more
true, participating in closer-to-maintstream Jewish cultural life.

Is there room here to discuss what makes the music exciting in the first
place, and what makes it sound Jewish, or puts it into a Jewish context
for the people who like it? (Obviously, if this music doesn't speak to
you, or you reject this as "Jewish" music, this is not the question 
for you--but I suspect that I am not the only person to whom this is
unfamiliar territory about which I am curious.)

ari

Ari Davidow
The klezmer shack: http://www.well.com/user/ari/klez/
owner: jewish-music mailing list
e-mail: ari (at) ivritype(dot)com