music in "Delta Jews" and lack of it in "Bombay Jews"

[Judith R Cohen <judithc...>]

Hi, two films were screened in Toronto at the JCC the other day, (I may
have the names slightly wrong), Delta Jews and Jews of Bombay. 

"Delta" has been around for a while of course, just thought I'd mention
that I thought the music score  was a really neat running non-verbal
commentary , with classic melodies such as "Shalom Aleikhem" arranged in
Delta style, and Delta klezmer accompanying a Jewish gold tournament...
also in general the combination of humour, history and honesty was
moving. I can't remember of find the name of the composer/arranger.

"The Bombay Jews" which is newer, 2002 (Rajesh Latkar ) issed all kinds
of musical (and many other) opportunities. I've spent considerable and
extremely enjoyable time with Bene Israel from Bombay in Toronto and in
Israel, and in for a short (30 min.) film, couldn't believe their music
was getting such short shrift. Very little (and far from the best I've
heard) of their synagogue singing, especially little of their wonderful
group singing, and nothing at all about such cornerstones as the groom's
song to the bride, "Yonati Ziv" to an old local melody, and their
adaptation of the Hindi narrative religious song , the _kirtan_ , to
singing the story of Joseph and other Old Testament narratives, to the
harmonium. This indeed sh9ows up at the very end of the film, but with
no coment, no subtitlee, no anything - and only in the dubious role of
accompanying a long look at various tombstones.


Not only were the old Bene Israel women's songs in Marathi not even
mentioned, I was also incensed at the absence of women in the film
except as one more set of colourful decorative objects adorning the
synagogue, when Bene Israel women are traditionally leaders in education
and extremely articulate. One would have thought they were mute. The
only woman who spoke was an American "Jewish Educator" who came across
as embarrassingly ignorant and not very bright, "it's incredible, you
know, they're so DIFFERENT and then they're you know NOT so different, I
mean they have different melodies in the synagogue - "  -
well, DUH!!
- "but they use Hebrew and then they have tunes that are the same so you
know they're different and they're not. And when I went to Friday night
supper I was all dirty and hadn't had time for a shower and they offered
me a shower and clean clothes."

(I did, of course, during the question period, comment on all the above,
and also ask the director of the Jewish film series at the JCC why she
[as she herself had said in her intro] not only had managed not to know
we have a small but active and visible Bene Israel community here, she
didn't even bother to find out.) (My new edition of "how to make friends
and..." will be out shortly...)

Judith

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