Re: Another review of Lorele's CD

[Rigel Keffer <rbkeffer...>]

please take me off of this list


At 06:38 PM 2/12/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Friends,
>
>I wanted to share this article that will be in the Spring volume of the 
>Feminist Journal "Femspec"--a sort of review of my CD. I can't say I 
>understand all of it, but I love how it turned out! :-)
>
>I hope you enjoy reading it--
>Lorele
>* * *
>
>Songs My Bubbe Should Have Taught Me Volume One Passover
>The Lori Cahan-Simon Ensemble
>
>Reviewed by Batya Weinbaum
>
>Total playing time on this Cleveland-produced CD is 47:38.
>
>The mythical remake for feminists seeking a magical real spin is Miriams 
>Gezang (Miriams Song, 5:19, #8), which sings the part that Miriam had to 
>do with getting us out of slavery and into the Promised Land. That was the 
>answer the singer told me when
>I approached her and asked her to take out an ad after a Workmans Circle 
>Klezmer Orchestra performance in Beachwood, OH, at a community center 
>(where I kept having deja vous feelings to a kibbutz) to support the 
>Jewish issue of Femspec and so that she could get national and 
>international exposure. She said no, as she was a poor struggling musician 
>trying to make her living off her music who needed a patron or two 
>herself, but would I review the CD. I said yes, inwardly groaning, all I 
>needed was to take on more work for myself, if she could tell me how the 
>CD fit into the mission of what the journal was trying to accomplish. She 
>told me the folklore around Miriams well, kept alive in the shtetl, which 
>I dont really recall now, and I took the CD home. But in listening to the 
>CD, not understanding a word of Yiddish, but enjoying the lilt and the 
>beat, which inevitably gets me up off my feet, I felt the recording does 
>more than that. It keeps the fantasy of the world of European Jewry alive 
>in our imagination, a world we were all a part of, a world that she and I 
>a generation once removed were nevertheless touched by, though we never 
>directly shared. Listening to her sing, even if it were not the specific 
>tune of Miriams Well, activated deep wells and recesses and pools, of a 
>subterranean fantasy life, one which flows deeper and faster and hotter 
>and colder, one which curls at a pace swifter and in a current beyond the 
>current stone hard rigid concrete parking lot cement stone reality that 
>eclipses us in which chopped into pieces and fragments we currently manage 
>to live day by day now. Some how, tuning into one of the groups greatest 
>fans, I inevitably lead chains of spontaneous women dancers of all ages 
>shapes and sizes from the audience, in the aisles, down from the hills, 
>across the fronts of stages. She touches, moves and activates a cultural 
>memory that runs deep. The Multi Phasic Personality Test currently has a 
>questiondo you want to be a singer, True False. Perhaps, Loris CD isnt 
>about fantasy, but is fantasy, is about keeping fantasy in reality, making 
>fantasy about worlds that are past and gone part of our current reality. 
>Redefining our present reality by dipping into the past and re-orienting 
>the way we relate to present reality. Bringing our ethnic otherness into 
>reality. Not drugging it out, isolating it as a symptom. Passing it on. 
>Freud would be proud, Lori. Sing on.
>
>
>Many Jewish Women have turned to Israel and turned to myth as a way to 
>push the boundaries of the imagination.
>ANNOUNCING THE JEWISH ISSUE!
>
>Focusing on the issues of Jewish women in speculative and science fiction, 
>issue 4.2 will contain:
>- Gloria Orensteins Vision and Visibility
>- A critical examination of Jewish women in Pulp Science Fiction by Susan 
>Kray.
>- Four pieces of fiction: Marylin Gales Lilith 1996, Sashas Harlem, E.M. 
>Broners De-Winging the Angel, and Marleen Barrs Close Encounters with the 
>Monica Kind.
>- Four selected poems: Marilyn Jurichs Even death is uncertain, Carol 
>Roses Ex-nihilo, Karen Alcalys One of those nights, and Lorraine Scheins 
>Goddess of Bergen Belson.
>- Artwork by Marion Epstein.
>- Several book reviews, inclduing Bob Charlick on Marge Piercys Sleeping 
>with Cats, and Phyllis Lassner on Womens Holocaust Writing.
>
>Wouldnt FEMSPEC be great for your classroom?
>Bulk rates are available.
>To place an order or subscription, please con tact
>Caddo Gap Press at CaddoGap (at) aol(dot)com
>
>--
>You can now hear Lori's new CD, Songs My Bubbe Should Have Taught Me; 
>Vol.1: Passover, at: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lcahan Only $15 & postage. 
>Email me for more info.
>
>
>
>

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