Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Thanks to former NPR reporter and former ABC news producer and bureau chief Deb Amos, who forwarded to me this wonderful YouTube video which I’d never seen before. The graphic technique has been used often before, but it tells a wonderful story of Arab-Americans who are just like you and me, while being of another religious and ethnic tradition. The differences between us are no more nor less than the differences between any one American and another.

You almost have to watch the film and devote your attention fully to it and then do the same for the song because each make very strong statements. The latter is especially interesting I think. You have a Muslim-American writing a country music song that affirms traditional Muslim values that are also traditional American values. It’s really quite masterful. Another beautiful irony of this song is that it adopts the same musical genre, country music, which after 9/11 inserted so much jingoism and Islamophobia into American popular culture.

tags deb amos, kareem salama, land called paradise

A few weeks ago I read that Seattle’s Medieval Women’s Choir would be performing Sephardic music tonight. That was a good reason to go since I love early music and Sephardic music. But an even more important reason was that I saw my old band mate, Shira Kammen was performing as accompanist. Way back in the early 1980s when we were both UC Berkeley grad students, my brother and I formed a Jewish music ensemble, Yasmine, which played in the Bay Area and recorded one audio tape, Jewish Songs of Celebration and Struggle. We also performed at the first Bay Area Jewish Music Festival which I founded with Gerry Tenney. When we first conceived of our group, Todd decided to invite Shira to join. She was a consummate fiddle player with a wonderful alto voice.

My brother is an excellent musician, far better than I. But Shira was the true professional among us. She was an elegant accompanist, never missing a note, never performing off key. She was always prominent in the mix but never too forward and never too far back. Not only that, but when two brothers perform together while their voices mesh wonderfully their personalities don’t always. Shira was the calm middle whenever there was tension. She had that wry, self-deprecating sense of humor that so many Jews share. She’s gone on to a professional career performing on medieval stringed instruments though her original one is the violin. Among the distinguished early music groups she’s belonged to are Ensemble Alcatraz and Ensemble P.A.N.

The concert was delightful. Here are Margriet’s insightful program notes. The choir was quite good but the soloists and accompanists were even better. Linda Strandberg had a vibrant soprano voice that conveyed the passion and intensity of the Sephardic melodies. I especially loved her opening the concert standing at the entrance to the synagogue’s sanctuary singing a very slow, resonant version of La Rosa Enfloresce (”The Rose Flowers”). The notes were piercing. The melody gorgeous. For my wife and I this was a special moment since this was the music we chose to walk down the aisle at our wedding. I first heard the song from a Hesperion XX record I bought while a grad student at UC Berkeley, right around the time Shira and I were in Yasmine together. I also note that Shira has performed with Hesperion XX, another indication of the high musical regard in which she is held.

Shira had great attack during her solos and accompaniment bringing gusto to the music. Her duets with Margriet Tindemans (also the Choir’s director), who played medieval fiddle, were exciting to listen to. The concert even featured two songs on Yasmine’s cassette, Dodi Li and Et Dodim, both from Song of Songs. During several songs, notably the sinuous vocal ornamentations of D’ror Yikra, it was all I could do to stop myself from joining along with the singing.

When I introduced myself during intermission I was delighted to find that she remembered me and our collaboration. It was so good to see her.

For anyone from Seattle, my wife and I ate at a new Asian noodle place called Boom Noodle on Capitol Hill. While the ambiance reminded me of a college cafeteria (big open tiled space with lots of reverb and noise of diners). People eat at long common tables so you don’t get a lot of privacy. But the food is quite extraordinary along with being relatively inexpensive. We had an appetizer, two noodle bowls, dessert and sake for $50 including tip. I had a seafood noodle soup with udon that included ling cod, penn cove mussels and shrimp. The mango mousse was delightful, closer to pane cotta than mousse. While Seattle is a good city for restaurants I’ve never been impressed by most of the Asian offerings. It’s great to have our first superb noodle house. Here’s the P-I review.

tags boom-noodle, ladino, margriet-tindemans, medieval-womens-choir, sephardic-music, shira-kammen

The bodily function that dare not speak its name in the pages of the NY Times

Pissed, pissed, PISSED. There, I’ve said it and I feel so much better. But Ben Ratliff can’t say it in the NY Times. The music critic wrote a review of a rock concert that contained one of the oddest locutions I’ve ever read in a newspaper. A picture of the lead singer printed the band’s name thus: ****** Jeans. Here’s what followed:

His band, from Philadelphia, has a name that lies just on the other side of what’s printable here; it describes a basic bladder-related humiliation, something that happens to the drunk or scared or infantile. As it happens, that described some of Friday night’s crowd at the Silent Barn, a little performance space in Ridgewood, Queens.

Has it really come to this? The Times can’t publish the world “pissed” in print?? What is God’s name is wrong with pissed? Is there a problem with acknowledging the human function of micturation in a family newspaper? I’d like to ask a Times editor what is so bad about this word. And further, this Google search of the Times site brings up scores of references to the word ‘pissed’ in the Times. The difference is that these seem all to be quotations from books in the Times Book Review. But seriously, what’s the difference?

I know Jon Stewart is going to have a field day with this one on his show. This is one of the things that makes me happy I’m a blogger and not a professional journalist. In case you’re interested–Ratliff liked the concert.

This incident reminded me of a column from the L.A. Times a few days ago by Gustavo Arellano, So who the *#% & $+ wants to know?

The Times ran [an] article…about its new owner, Sam Zell. A photographer at one of his other newspapers had asked Zell about the type of coverage he expected from reporters. In responding, Zell apparently became angry because she turned her back on him before he was finished, so he directed what the paper called a “two-word obscenity” at her.

…The Times’ coverage of its loose-lipped boss is…hilariously dowdy. Seriously, Spring Street: a “two-word obscenity?” What on Earth did Zell say? “Darn tootin’? ” “God dammit?” (Or is that one word?) “Mitt Romney?” If the story deserves to be written, don’t we deserve to know what it’s really about? The Chicago Tribune did a slightly better job describing Zell’s snafu, describing his jab as a “four-letter” word — and as weak as that description is (was the offending term “poop?” “Hell?” “Hola?”), it’s still much better than what The Times allowed.

…The silliest part of all this? Anyone can easily find the unexpurgated Zell and Butz quotes on the Internet in about three seconds. Curious readers like myself will merely forsake The Times and other such prudish newspapers and go directly to news organizations with no such compunction. The Times doesn’t have to insert bad words in every story to remain relevant; just print the news…

The fact that I can’t print…Zell’s f-bomb in a Times column criticizing The Times for not printing them in the first place is ridiculous.

Hey, Zell: I hear you love to curse. How about making this paper reflect your saltiness, you (same word Zell uses to insult reporters, no doubt appreciated by him, but that can’t appear in the Los Angeles Times — yet)?

Say Amen somebody.

tags pissed-jeans, Primal-Call-and-Response-at-Bands-Rumbling-Bash

Haaretz just featured a profile of Mira Awad, an Israeli Arab Christian who appears in a new hit TV comedy called Arab Labor. Awad began as a professionally trained musician and recorded demos which no Israeli record company wanted to touch with a 10 foot pole because they are petrified of Arab music. Not necessarily petrified in an overtly racist way. Just petrified of its supposed ‘alienness’ from Israeli pop culture and of their inability to market it to the public:

In guitarist Amos Hadani’s small studio in downtown Tel Aviv she is completing the recording of her debut album, which will comprise songs whose lyrics and music she has written herself, mostly in Arabic.

The long road she has traveled until arriving at the final stages of the album began during her days as a student at the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in Ramat Hasharon. “Eight years ago I already had demos ready and I tried to interest several people in them. But it didn’t really work out, and at a certain stage I got tired of trying and abandoned music for a number of years,” she recalls. “Arabic is apparently a language that still arouses fear and reservations in Israel. The fact is that no one jumped into the cold water, no one took a risk with me. Most of the reactions about the album had nothing to with the music or the production, and this began to affect me. My career in theater began to gain momentum and I said to myself, ‘Thank God, at least there is another place where I can express my creativity.’”

But as sometimes happens, the mass market may be far more ready to embrace “the other” than the doyennes of pop taste recognize. Visit her MySpace site and listen to Bahlawan and tell me she’s not ready for Israeli prime time. Azini is a song with more rock-pop “chops” recorded with the enormously popular Idan Raichel Project. Awad also recorded a duet with Noa of the Beatles We Can Work It Out that’s making the rounds of YouTube. It’s cute and makes a political statement but doesn’t showcase either of them to best effect. Far more compelling musically are these videos of more “hard core” Arab pop performances featured at MySpace video. As far as I’m concerned Awad has all her bases covered and if an Israeli record company can’t take a risk on her then they can’t take a risk on anything.

One warning: this is a woman who speaks her mind. Hearing Hatikvah doesn’t make her heart beat pit-a-pat. It makes her sad as one might expect coming from an Israeli Arab:

Mira Anuar-Awad was born in an Arab village in the northern part of Israel and has a full Israeli citizenship. She will sing Zman (Time) in the Kdam-Eurovision, combining Hebrew and Arabic. “There will probably be some people thinking I am not eligible to represent Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest because I am not Jewish, and I do feel, to some extent, that this country does not represent my true being” says Anuar-Awad. “When the Israeli national anthem is played I am usually sad and embarrassed cause it doesn’t stand for anyone of my national symbols” Mira adds. These statements by the star of the musical My Fair Lady have caused quite a commotion in Israel, just 5 days before the contest.

In certain Israeli nationalist circles, they can’t understand why Israeli Arabs don’t just shut up and get down on their knees and thank Jews for putting up with their endless whining and carping about discrimination and inequality.

tags arab-labor-tv-show, idan-raichel-project, israeli-arab-pop-singer-actress, mira-awad

KBCS has been playing Tracy Grammer’s cover of The Waking Hour (hear it) in heavy rotation and it is ravishing. David Francey, who wrote it, is a fine Scottish-born singer-songwriter who now lives in Canada. Among his other extraordinary songs is Redwing Blackbird. While Francey’s version is entirely serviceable, Grammer’s takes it to its apotheosis. She slows down the original tempo and somehow makes it more sorrowful and lovely. What I especially love is the Daniel Lanois-like guitar accompaniment. It is haunting and soulful.

I started to describe the song’s storyline and realized that it’s too evocative to pin down to any single meaning. Best to leave it to you to listen and judge for yourself. For Grammer’s live YouTube performance check this out.

tags david-francey, the-waking-hour, tracy-grammer

Youssou N'Dour, the Senegalese superstar, has a new album that came out two weeks ago, Rokku Mi Rokka. Robert Christgau, writing in his breezy style for Rolling Stone says: ...Here his strategy of moving a few favorite musicians north to Mali changes up the Senegalese mbalax he invented without surrendering its Sahel gestalt. Translations from the Wolof reveal lyrics about Senegalese independence, Sufi saints, the value of traveling, remembering, thinking. They're worth following, as are the phonetic transliterations. But with N'Dour, the prime attraction is always musical, radiating out from a voice whose skylike clarity and beseeching high end would catch you short in a singer half his ...

Great day on Eldridge Street--klezmer musicians (Eldridge Street Project) I wrote a post few weeks ago about a project organized by one of my favorite Jewish musicians, Yale Strom called Great Day on Eldridge Street. Yale gathered together every serious klezmer musician he could find and took their picture in front of the historic Eldridge Street shul, which is undergoing a major renovation. All of this is meant to reclaim the Lower East Side as a cradle of Jewish life and culture in New York. This photo was meant to mirror a historic photograph of Harlem jazz musicians taken in the late 1950s. I hadn't seen the ...

My Brit friend living in Japan, Michael Furmanovsky, who first introduced me to Alison Krauss (and African music) sent me an mp3 from her new collaboration with Robert Plant, Raising Sand (album website). I listened to it and thought: "Well, that's very nice." But to tell you the truth it didn't send me into raptures. A few days later I decided to build an Amazon store here at this blog and went looking for the recording. It damn near knocked my socks off to learn that the record was number 1. It's number 6 on Billboard. Which all goes to show that Allison Krauss, who ...

I was listening to a music program of Middle Eastern music on KEXP the other day when this incredibly jaunty, joyful song aired. You don't hear Hebrew too much on the public airwaves so I was immediately struck by this lovely Israeli song. After calling the DJ, I discovered that it was Mosh Ben Ari's Im Rak Na'iz (hear it) from the new Putumayo Presents Israel collection. The song originally appeared on Ben Ari's album, Derech ("Path"). One thing that immediately struck me about the lyrics was that they were overtly political though not stridently so. And I always enjoy hearing popular music which addresses the Israeli-Arab ...

Marcel Khalife made a triumphant return to Seattle tonight to open the U.S. leg of his North American tour. 800 people gathered to hear him at Town Hall. The audience was mostly members of the local Arab American community though there were many world and Arab music lovers like myself as well. It appears that we almost didn't get to hear him. Earlier in the day, he'd been delayed for three hours by U.S. Customs in crossing from Canada into the States. Tonight, before performing Mahmoud Darwish's Passport, he dedicated the song to the Customs agent responsible for his delay and recited these lyrics: Everyone's heart is my citizenship So drop this passport off of me! It ...