Re: SABBATH IN PARADISE

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

How does one obtain, or rent/view, this film?


>From: GAronoff (at) aol(dot)com
>Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>Subject: Re: What Is Jewish Music? (revisited!)
>Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1999 11:19:33 EST
>
>
>First I would like to more enthusiastically endorse Sabbath in Paradise.  
>It
>gives a good picture of the diversity within the big tent of Jewish music.
>It is too easy to see the film as a dichotomy:  Andy Statman v. Marc Ribot.
>I saw the film as giving voice - verbal and musical - to a spectrum of
>artists struggling with the question What Is Jewish Music?   Intention was
>crucial.  But for many so was immersion in Jewish traditional sounds.
>
>I also liked the film as a film.  The interwoven interviews, concert 
>footage,
>and fictional short story of the Sabbath worked really well for me.  It was
>both informative and emotionally moving.
>
>As for the assertion that some of these musicians are trying to be big fish
>in a small pond, this seems to belittle two important features of Jewish
>musical fusion.
>
> >From my listening to a fair number of Tzadik, JAM and other fusion 
>releases,
>I see many of these artists as trying to find a way to fit a Jewish element
>into their broader careers.    This seems to be totally valid, both 
>Jewishly
>and artistically.  Judaism is very diverse in the United States.  Why 
>should
>we be surprised if the "Jewish Album"  of different artists sounds very
>different from what many of us were raised with.  Also, why should we 
>demand
>that an artist become a folklorist or chazan before they can make their own
>form of Jewish expression.  And why would we want a weak klezmer 
>performance
>rather than a strong jazz performance by a jazz artist investigating his or
>her own Jewish heritage and Jewish soul.
>
>As for Jewish music generally, these musicians are doing something that 
>seems
>traditionally Jewish to me.  Incorporating elements of the local sound into
>their own Jewish music.  This incorporation has happened in the past to 
>such
>a degree that we now view many of these incorporations as the purest of
>Jewish expression.  The most musically sophisticated on this list can
>certainly tell what is traditional and what is the incorporated musical
>element, but for (I would bet) many on this list and certainly many in the
>audience, a doina is Jewish, period.  So why shouldn't an artist like Rick
>Recht incorporate a John Cougar Mellancamp type heartland rock sound into 
>his
>Jewish album "Tov."  Rick has a career as a rock performer totally separate
>from his Jewish material.  But he has made an album - that I don't believe
>could possibly be viewed as anything other than Jewish music - that makes
>heartland rock sound Jewish.
>
>In the end we will appreciate or not appreciate any individual act of 
>fusion,
>personal expression, or whatever.  But we gain little criticizing the
>Jewishness of the exercise.
>
>Gideon
>
>
>

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