on 12/5/02 8:53 AM, Efrén del Valle at efrendv@yahoo.es wrote:

But when referring to a movement that's supposed to be representing a whole generation or an ethnic group like in this case, using that sounds to me more as an excuse.

Doing music (or art of any kind) that purports to speak to a large and general group of people is a dangerous thing anyway. A movement as tiny as something like RJC claiming it's the fountainhead of the expression of a bunch of people is like the makers of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER claiming their show represents the American family. It's a handful of people making a kind of dream version of what THEY believe it should be. Antbody who ever played a lot of jewish weddings will tell you as follows -- "Der Shtiler Bulgar" less represents the cultural expression of the young Jews than does "Ease n Down The Road". I base this on the fact that I never saw a young Jewish person walk up to the bandstand and request any of the Jewish music that RJC cats refer to as this source of young Jewish cultural pride. They did, however, request "Celebration" a whole lot. For obvious reasons, nobody wants to talk about it. If you start

something like the RJC you should be ready to give clear explanations if it really has some solid foundations. What includes you in that group? Which are the features that bring all those people and their artistic expression together besides the fact of being born as Jews?

I think the role of the kind of musician of which you speak is so marginalized anyway that it's kind of irrelevant past that handful of consumers that want to identify themselves as part of something the percieve as/hope is "radical". What brings these artists together is that they play at the same clubs, generally record for the same labels, and make use of similar "radical" music cliches along with archtypical "Jewish" cliches. I'm disqualifying Ben Goldberg, Masada, and David Krakauer from that, because -- except for Zorn -- I don't see those cats as aligning themselves with a movement. And I don't see where putting some lines written in freygish mode over top of "phat beats", another culture's percussion, or a squealing Jimi Hendrix guitar makes it radical. If you really look into the history of Jewish music after World War 2, you can see that this kind of cross-pollenation took place to good commercial effect and varying degrees of artistic success. And I'm not talking about making an in-depth analysis of the music, either -- just a little more than a cursory look at the records. "Bei Mir Bist Du choen" doesn't really require that, nor does "My Little Cousin", "The Wedding Samba", or the Artie Shaw record "The Chant" (where, over 1940 phat beats, he goes into a little medley of Jewish themes). And Irving Fields' BAGELS AND BONGOS, where he's playing Jewish melodies as Latin piano vamps over a cocktail Latin rhythm section. So much as what the RJC purports to "accomplish" is stuff that already got done, just without the requisite skronking over top of it. But I guess requisite skronking makes you radical. skip h

on 12/5/02 9:53 AM, Zachary Steiner at zsteiner@butler.edu wrote:

Should we just call it the "Good (or mediocre depending on your POV) Jewish Culture Series"?

Zach

It's not the presentation's Jewish aspect I have a problem with. It's the term "radical" and the notion that it's speaking for a bunch of people who don't even know it exists. skip h