Joshua Nelson’s ‘Moaning And Groaning’

The black and Jewish singer brings together two musical traditions that help define his people.

George Robinson, Special To The Jewish Week

Joshua Nelson could imagine the sound of the music he wanted to make. Growing up a Reform Jew and an African American, he imagined a music that would combine “the moaning and groaning” of two historically oppressed people in a form that would go straight to the heart.

“You heard that pentatonic scale,” he says wistfully, “that Dr. [Isaac] Watts metered hymn-singing, and the idea that Jewish music could sound like that always resonated in my head. And I would tell myself, ‘You just gotta get to it.’”

Nelson, who will be bringing his Kosher Gospel Choir to the Museum of Jewish Heritage on Dec. 25, has gotten to it admirably. On record, and even more emphatically on stage, he has created a breathtaking musical synthesis that unites the metered hymn tradition that grew from the 18th-century compositions of Englishman Isaac Watts and the African-inspired rhythms that black gospel singers used to underpin it, with Hebrew liturgy, Jewish theology and Yiddish soul.

“The Hebrew prayers really fit to the style of gospel music phrasing, all that melisma,” Nelson says of multiple notes to sing one syllable that is common to both traditions. “Then it’s just a matter of adding a certain syncopation from gospel music.”

When the syllables are stretched over many notes like that, the famous “krekhts,” the cry that is the heart of both classic hazanut and klezmer horn and reed playing jumps to the forefront. And when the krekhts are linked to the thrilling syncopations of African-American music, the result is a Jewish musical experience like no other.

Klezmer trumpet giant Frank London enthuses about Nelson and his musical synthesis: “Joshua is the loudest, baddest, funkiest singer I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with!”

Nelson grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey. He was an avid member of a Reform synagogue at a time when what he heard in services was the rather German Protestant sounds of classical Reform. He was happy enough with that sound until he found a recording of Mahalia Jackson in his grandmother’s house. It was purely serendipitous.

“My family weren’t musical,” he says. “Even my discovery of Mahalia didn’t happen because I heard the record being played. I just happened to find it and put it on because I was curious. And I loved it. That was my first musical interest after the music I heard in synagogue.”

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Holocaust Christmas Carol Deserves Prosecution Says Romanian Foreign Minister

Song Contained Lyrics 'Holy God Would Not Leave the Kike Alive'

By JTA

Romania’s foreign minister has called on his country’s judiciary to prosecute the parties responsible for the airing of a Christmas carol about burning Jews.

Titus Corlatean made the statement Thursday following international uproar over the public broadcasters TVR3’s television transmission last week of a song by the Dor Transilvan ensemble, which celebrated the Holocaust.

“I publicly express my legitimate expectation that the relevant institutions, the National Audiovisual Council (CNA), the National Council against Discrimination (CNCD), the General Prosecutor’s Office, as well as the specialized committees of Parliament will take the necessary measures and investigate, punish and prevent” such situations, the foreign minister’s statement read.

The statement followed harsh condemnations of TVR3’s airing of the carol and over the station’s claims that it was not to blame because the musical selection was compiled by a cultural arm of the western Cluj County.

The Christmas carol by Dor Transilvan contained the lyrics: “The kikes, damn kikes, Holy God would not leave the kike alive, neither in heaven nor on earth, only in the chimney as smoke, this is what the kike is good for, to make kike smoke through the chimney on the street.”

The Israeli embassy in Bucharest called the carol and its broadcasting “reprehensible, worrisome” and “capable of boosting anti-Semitism in Romania” in a statement. The statement also expressed the hope that Romanian authorities take “appropriate measures so that such incidents do reoccur.”

In a statement sent to JTA by the Romanian embassy in Israel, Corlatean added: “I consider it utterly unacceptable that in the 21st century anti-Semitism should further be manifest in various forms.”

Romania, he added, “has a good legislative framework with respect to fighting anti-Semitism, the denial of the Holocaust and promotion of personalities guilty of war crimes” and “has undertaken, for over a decade now, a coherent and conscious effort at reconciliation with the past and recovering our own history.”

The Deep Jewish Roots of Kanye West’s Awesome ‘Blood on the Leaves’

Abel Meeropol’s ‘Strange Fruit’ gets remixed into Yeezus in a manner worthy of its creator, for song of the year

By David Meir Grossman for Tablet Magazine

Why did Kanye West sample “Strange Fruit” for his song “Blood on the Leaves”? It’s the biggest mystery of his troubled masterpiece Yeezus, which makes it by default the biggest mystery of music in 2013. No artist dared to even attempt to be as interesting as Kanye West this year—other AAA acts like Daft Punk and Justin Timberlake were content preening in mirrors, like parakeets in cages littered with press releases calling them visionaries. Yeezus is a bull and a bullfighter all in one, with destruction and celebration intermingling and often inseparable. Subtlety doesn’t exist in the world of Kanye West’s sixth album, which blasts through its 40 minutes without taking a second breath. Multitudes of samples and influences are present on Yeezus, from Chicago’s current no-adults-allowed drill rap scene to the industrial sounds of ’80s bands like Ministry to any other type of sound that settles for nothing less than the listener’s complete attention. But even with all the Roland TR-808s in the world, “Blood on the Leaves,” with Nina Simone’s voice singing Abel Meeropol’s lyrics, stands out above all else.

The story of “Strange Fruit” is an unexpected one, with roots in the Jewish-American socialism that was so common in the 1930s. Meeropol’s story is well-documented by now—a Bronx-born-and-raised schoolteacher, he wrote “Strange Fruit” not as a song but a poem, in response to Leonard Beitler’s horrifying 1930 photo of the of lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, In. Meeropol’s wife, as well as black vocalist Laura Duncan, performed the song a few times, and it soon found its way to Billie Holliday. The song would keep his family awash in royalties for his entire life and would play at his funeral. As David Margolick describes in his 2001 book, Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, there remains a dispute over whether Holliday understood the song’s central metaphor—“Southern trees bear a strange fruit/ Blood on the leaves and blood at the root”—at her first recording, but it hardly matters: Her voice describes such terrible pain that it’s easy to get a gut feeling that you’ve arrived at the aftermath of a terrible crime. Barney Josephson, who ran Cafe Society, where Holiday performed regularly, would say that “She sang it just as well when she didn’t know what it was about.” Josephson almost never took a special interest in what, precisely, Holiday was singing, but rules were drawn up over how and when “Strange Fruit” could be performed: All food and drink service stopped before its performance, the only light in the room would shine on Holliday’s face, and it would end the night.

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In Pursuing Bob Dylan for Hate Speech, Croatian Group Denies Holocaust

Controversy Over Odd Interview Sheds Light on Old Atrocities

By Jay Michaelson for The Jewish Daily Forward

Bob Dylan uttered hate speech?! Not so fast. In fact, it’s his accusers are engaged in hate speech: specifically, denying the Holocaust.

The blogosphere was abuzz with the news Tuesday that Dylan was being investigated by French authorities for comments he’d made in a Rolling Stone magazine interview, published in English in September, 2012, and in French a month later. Those remarks are alleged to have insulted Croatians. But a close look at what Dylan actually said should clear him of all charges, even under the notoriously draconian French laws, and in fact, implicates his accusers.

Here’s what Dylan said, in context:

“The United States burned and destroyed itself for the sake of slavery. The USA wouldn’t give it up. It had to be grinded out. The whole system had to be ripped out with force. A lot of killing. What, like, 500,000 people? A lot of destruction to end slavery. And that’s what it really was all about. This country is just too f–ked up about color. It’s a distraction. People at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighborhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”

Actually, perhaps a little more context is relevant. The Rolling Stone interview in question is an exceedingly weird conversation, even by Bob Dylan standards. Though the interviewer doesn’t say so, it seems like Dylan must have been under the influence of some substance or other – he rambles, goes on wacky digressions, and, several times, refers to his “transfiguration,” which may or may not be a quasi-messianic reincarnation, but which seems to have something to do with his near-fatal 1966 motorcycle crash. It’s a weird read, and the above excerpt is typical.

So, let’s parse out what Dylan was actually talking about: the legacy of slavery in America, and how it lingers on, particularly in the South. Dylan frames it in a peculiar, somewhat mystical way: that African Americans can “sense” if a white person has “slave master or Klan in your blood.” That is part of the weirdness of the interview. But his point is clear enough: that the legacy of slavery lives on, and leaves its traces today. (I made the same point myself, in a recent editorial in these pages, about how some Southerners are unrepentant about slavery and its legacy.)

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The Other Kabbalah-Loving L.A. Musician

 LA-based singer-songwriter Mikey Pauker's inspirations come from across the map. From contemporary pop music to Jewish liturgy, hasidut, kabbalah, and his own Jewish experiences, Pauker skillfully combines upbeat folk songs with classical Jewish texts. Check out, for instance, "Hinei Mah Tov," but beware: the infectious "Eeoohh!" hook will be stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

In addition to the fine songwriting chops heard in his debut album, Extraordinary Love, Mikey has the distinction of founding Merkava Mentors, an innovative Jewish music program that fosters education and collaboration between aspiring songwriters and more established tunesmiths.

Pauker's love and appreciation for Jewish spirituality and music developed through his involvement in summer camps, his university's Hillel, and a sojourn to Israel. Along the way, he found himself continually writing music, and devised one of the main goal's for his art and for Merkava Mentors: to spread what he calls "spiritual music": melodies and lyrics that are Jewish in content but accessible and relatable by all.

Judging by Extraordinary Love, he's well on his way.

- Elie Lichtschein for Jewniverse

Secret History of Paul McCartney, the Jewish Beatle

Why Macca Is Like Fab Four Member of Tribe

By Seth Rogovoy for The Jewish Daily Forward

Sir Paul McCartney recently released “New,” his first album of original rock songs since 2007’s “Memory Almost Full.” Given the 71-year-old McCartney’s love affair with all things Jewish for the past half-century — including collaborators, business associates, girlfriends and wives — the title could well be meant as a transliteration of the all-purpose Jewish word nu.

The nu — I mean, new — album, full of Beatlesque confections in a panoply of styles — is co-produced by Mark Ronson, one of the hottest producers in popular music for the last decade or so, and the scion of a prominent English-Jewish family (the name was originally Aaronson). Ronson got the McCartney gig after DJing his 2011 wedding to Nancy Shevell, which took place on the day after Yom Kippur.

Over the holiday, the bride and groom attended services at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St. John’s Wood, near McCartney’s home and close to Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded most of their songs. Reports from the time of the wedding suggested that McCartney was considering a Jewish conversion in deference to his newlywed, but that apparently hasn’t happened — yet.

But Shevell is not the first Jewish Lady McCartney; that honor belonged to McCartney’s first wife, Linda Eastman. Born in New York City and raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., Linda Eastman was the daughter of Lee Eastman — the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, born Leopold Vail Epstein — and Louise Sara Lindner.

When Linda Eastman and McCartney’s daughter, Stella McCartney, became a fashion designer, she followed family footsteps into the rag trade; her maternal grandfather, Max J. Lindner, was founder of the Lindner Company, the largest women’s clothing store in Cleveland, Ohio. Lindner was a member of the most prominent Reform temple in Cleveland and president of its Men’s Club; active in the Jewish Welfare Fund and in the Jewish country club; and a major philanthropic force in Cleveland’s Jewish community.

McCartney married Linda Eastman in 1969, and the two famously stayed together as one of rock music’s most stable, loving couples until Eastman’s death in 1998 due to complications from breast cancer. They made music together: first, on the album “Ram,” the cover of which pictures McCartney grasping two ram’s horns, and subsequently, in McCartney’s post-Beatles group, Wings.

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A fun video to watch with the 'mishpuche'/family

If you cannot see this video, go here.

Paul McCartney’s ‘NEW’: The Jew-ish Beatle’s Bar Mitzvah Album

He can still give you earworms and warm fuzzy retro feelings. But at 71, is Macca now finally a man?

By David Yaffa for Tablet Magazine

The title track of Paul McCartney’s NEW, his 16th solo studio album, has been saturating computers everywhere these days, and if Macca’s voice sounds giddy, it’s because he knows he’s reeled in a big one. If you have watched a YouTube video in the past few weeks, you have probably heard a fragment of the album’s title track. Paul’s reason for feeling renewal and rebirth, he has said, is his recent marriage to Nancy Shevell, a 51-year-old Jewess 20 years his junior. When McCartney’s marriage to Shevell was first announced, cyberspace was abuzz with the rumor that Sir Paul was going to join the faith of Nancy’s fathers, which was also the faith of his first wife Linda Eastman’s fathers, and the fathers of his one-time fiancée Jane Asher. Headlines like “Got to get Jew into my life” invariably followed.

The Jews may have lost Bob Dylan to Christianity for a few years, but could the goyim lose McCartney for good? It seems possible that, between a mega tour of epic proportions, and writing and recording these songs—a nuanced and baroque process involving a think-tank of four producers including Amy Winehouse, hipster knob twirler Mark Ronson, and Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer Sir George—that circumcision may not be the first thing on McCartney’s mind. Being a Jew—it’s one of those things you can get to later. When McCartney married Linda Eastman in 1969, as a rebound from John who (in effect) left him for Yoko, everyone noticed that Lennon’s new wife was Japanese, but most people didn’t notice that Eastman, a freethinking blonde photographer and groupie (who, after her first encounter with Paulie, bragged in a letter that she had “bagged a Beatle”), was Jewish. There was no talk of conversion, although Paul did say in interviews that, per matrilineal rabbinical law, his children with Linda were Jewish: Their daughter, the fashion designer Stella McCartney, appears to consider herself Jewish, although she did get married in a church.

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The Official Ballad of Thanksgivukkah

David Paskin wrote: Live from Kehillah Schechter Academy in Norwood, MA - it's the official Ballad of Thanksgivukkah.

Rav Yehuda Gets His Groove On

"Said Rav Yehuda: Even silence has its rules," announces spoken word poet Jake Marmer at the start of his new album,Hermeneutic Stomp.

Between his rhythmic poem-spitting and the frantic, tight, dazzling grooves of his backing band, Marmer's voice becomes one instrument in a massive silence-smashing symphony. The poet is by far the youngest and newest member of the ensemble, an ensemble that includes Frank London of The Klezmatics, and Greg Wall, one of the ruling saxophonists of New York's avant-garde jazz scene (and a practicing rabbi). But Stomp is nothing if not accessible, with pop riffs, quick, fun textures, and wise, witty one-liners sprinkled throughout the lyrics.

One track, "Klezmer Bulldog," praises the title pooch as a dumb but earnest creature, and imagines it performing a traditional dance to the rapid, churning, sloppily fast-movingJewish ethnic music: "Wobbling is flirtatious, drool affectionate—this is not about good looks, baby!"

Other pieces, like "The Laws of Dream-Cooking" and "Bathhouse of Dreams," sample characters and ideas from the Talmud, repositioning them in shtetl stories or Russian bathhouses in Brooklyn. Give it a listen here.

- Matthue Roth for Jewniverse

Peter Rosenberg, Hip-Hop's Jewish Radio Star

By Seth Berkman for The Forwards

Growing up in a kosher household in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, Peter Rosenberg became enamored with hip-hop listening to tapes by rapper Big Daddy Kane and scratching records on the turntables he saved up to buy at age 14. Today, Rosenberg is a co-host of one of the nation’s most listened to morning shows, on the iconic New York City hip-hop station Hot 97. The Forward’s Seth Berkman recently talked with Rosenberg about the influence of his parents (his father, M.J. Rosenberg, is a well-known critic of Israeli policy), the relationship between Jews and blacks in hip-hop, and his die-hard fandom of professional wrestling.

Seth Berkman: Your older brother got you into hip-hop?

Peter Rosenberg: I was already like 8. The first tape that I remember having was when my dad went to a store on his way home from work one day and asked someone what he should get for his son who likes hip-hop and he got me one by Super Lover Cee and Casanova Rud, “Girls I Got ‘Em Locked.” The first summer I went to sleep-away camp at age 9, I had like eight cassettes with me. I had “Long Live the Kane” [by Big Daddy Kane] and then they all got stolen at camp, Jewish camp mind you. Evidently there was a huge contingent of hip-hop fans there.

Were your parents supportive of your interest?

They were always really accepting. The only time I got any resistance was when I was 13 going on 14 and told them I wanted turntables — they weren’t against it until they found out how much they cost. But I got a job that summer and saved up. They were the same ones I got till this day, Technics 1200s.

They always knew that my interests were different from theirs. I have an incredibly privileged upbringing, not financially, although my parents were always upper-middle class, but I was completely privileged in that I utterly have had their support. They knew I was very committed in what I wanted to pursue and could tell that’s what I was suited for. I don’t think all parents would be that way.

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Reclaiming An Ancient Judeo-Arabic Musical Tradition

Elie Lichtschein for The Jewish Week

On a Monday night in late September, forty people gathered in a spacious, two-floor Chelsea Loft for the debut of the Maqam Project, a fusion of Judeao-Arabic music and reflective Jewish poetry. A maqam is an Arabic musical scale, similar to a jazz mode, which repeats a musical theme while allowing for and encouraging improvisation. Spearheading the project was its musical director, Epichorus founder, and oudist Rabbi Zach Fredman, who was selected as one of The Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” and serves as rabbi and music director of the New Shul in Greenwich Village. He was joined by a flutist, percussionist, and violin player. St. Louis-based writer and teacher Rabbi James Stone Goodman interspersed poetry pertaining to the parsha, or weekly Torah portion, across the Middle-Eastern melodies.

The word maqam is linguistically aligned with the Hebrew word makom, which means place. "One of the goals of the Maqam Project," Rabbi Fredman said, "is to have each maqam that we use conjure a different place and color." The Maqam Project follows in the footsteps of certain Syrian and Iraqi Jewish communities, who assign each week's Torah reading a special maqam. In synagogue each week, these communities chant the week’s maqam, in essence giving each portion its own distinct identity.

Which is an idea Rabbi Fredman is trying to explore: how to balance each week's Torah portion between the traditional Ashkenazi understanding and representation with the uniqueness of each portion's maqam. Rabbi Goodman's poetry fit nicely into this. Having vowed several years ago to write a poem each week for that week's parsha, Rabbi Goodman has a backlog of parsha poems from which to choose. His choice for Breishit, the first parsha in the Torah, with its reference to the ourobouros, a sign of endlessness and ascending circles, was fitting for the holiday of Sukkot, when the Torah begins to be reread.

It's Rabbi Fredman's hope that the Maqam Project will extend into a weekly video series offering bits of wisdom and Jewish thought that mesh his maqam interpretations with Goodman's words. The pair, along with other musicians, have already recorded videos of maqam-poems through the end of the book of Leviticus.

Elie Lichtschein is a NY-based writer currently pursuing a graduate degree in creative writing. He runs a monthly musical project called Celebrate Hallel.

Rapper Nissim Black Has a Spiritual Message for the Hip-Hop World

The Seattle musician formerly known as D. Black returns with a new album after his latest conversion, to Orthodox Judaism

By Emily K. Alhadeff for Tablet

On a dreary Pacific Northwest winter day, through an unmarked door and up a flight of stairs in a depressing stretch of strip malls just north of Seattle, I found Nissim Black crammed into a tiny recording room with his brother-in-law and musical partner, Yosef Brown. Here at London Bridge Studio, where Soundgarden recorded Louder Than Love in 1989 and in 1991 Pearl Jam recorded Ten, a repetitive electronic beat rolled out of the speakers. Both Black and Brown seemed to be in a state of meditation.

“For me, this record is completely spiritual,” Black, whose round face is typically stretched out in a smile these days, said while fiddling with sound controls on a computer. “I was in a trance almost the entire time.”

World Elevation, out this week, is Black’s third album and emblematic of the third version of his musical identity. Growing up in Seattle’s modest hip-hop scene, Damian Black started out as gangsta rapper D. Black and evolved into D. Black the messianic Jewish-Christian. At 27, Black is again reinventing himself—and his music—according to an intense spiritual journey he undertook when he converted to Orthodox Judaism from Christianity between 2010 and 2012. The conversion, which took him out of the music game for two years, also makes him one of a small but influential group of black Orthodox Jewish hip-hop artists that includes Y-Love and Shyne. But Black diverges from his fellow religious rappers in one critical way: While trying to stay in the game as a serious musician, Black has recorded a new album dedicated to setting the Jewish world ablaze with a spiritual message.

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Vampire Weekend’s Latest Album Is Ezra Koenig’s Guide for the Perplexed

On ‘Modern Vampires of the City,’ the frontman wrestles with Jewish questions, calling to mind a personal Kol Nidre

By Wayne Robins for Tablet Magazine

Remembrances of holy days in Tarrytown and Rye
I don’t wanna live like this, I don’t wanna die — “Finger Back”

Three years ago I was seeking tickets for one of three sold-out Vampire Weekend concerts at Radio City Music Hall. The tickets were a kind of early Sweet Sixteen gift for my youngest daughter. I was looking for three good seats—for Jackie, her girlfriend, and myself—and I suspect that among the three of us, I was the most dedicated fan.

Having worked as a pop music critic for 40 years, I knew someone to call for the favor of buying “house” seats without going the scalper route. But there was an awkward aspect to the request. I could only use tickets for Sept. 15 or 16. The third show, Sept. 17, was erev Yom Kippur, and the only song in my heart that night would be “Kol Nidre.”

But I was curious how Ezra Koenig, Vampire Weekend’s singer, guitarist, and primary lyricist, felt about performing on the holiest night of the Jewish year. So, I asked his mother, Bobby Bass. I had known Bass, a New Jersey psychotherapist, since we attended Bard College together in the late 1960s; in the early 1970s, we lived on the same street in Chelsea at a time when one could rent a Manhattan apartment for under $200 a month.

She told me that Ezra had gone to Hebrew school and been bar mitzvahed in their suburban, predominantly gentile New Jersey town. He decided that organized religion was not for him. That was his choice. Koenig played that Yom Kippur show at Radio City on Sept. 17, 2010, and I respect that choice.

But I do wonder if Koenig even had second thoughts about that Yom Kippur show. Vampire Weekend’s third album, Modern Vampires of the City, was released this May. Like its 2010 predecessor, Contra, it made its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The band has been playing the North American and European festival circuit during the summer and headlined the Ottawa Folk Festival on Rosh Hashanah and the Boston Calling Festival last weekend. It begins its North American arena tour Sept. 19 in Philadelphia and will play the Barclays Center in Brooklyn Sept. 20.

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New Yiddish Music Debuts in New York City

Young musicians take the stage at Sveta Kundish’s first U.S. concert

By Abigail Miller for Tablet

Tonight’s concert at the Center for Jewish History marks the American debut of Berlin-based singer Sveta Kundish, who has been celebrated in Europe and Israel as one of the great new Yiddish voices. The concert features a virtuosic group of musicians: Patrick Farrell, Benjy Fox-Rosen, and Michael Winograd, who have been performing as the Yiddish Art Trio, along with Deborah Strauss and Joshua Waletzky.

Yet just as exciting as who is performing is what is being performed: an incredible body of new work, songs composed by the musicians themselves. The songs are all in Yiddish and show an engagement with the language that is both literary and visceral; some of the lyrics are Yiddish poems, from poets like Shike Driz, Avrom Sutzkever, and Rivka Basman Ben-Hayim, and some are original compositions, from as long ago as 5753 and as far away as Brooklyn. The concert is the result, in Joshua Waletzky’s words, of several “fruits ripening at the same time.”

Waletzky is talking about some very specific timing—Kundish’s arrival in New York, Fox-Rosen’s return after a year abroad—but he could also be talking about how, over the thirty-odd years that separate him in age from the younger musicians he’ll be performing with tonight, a rich and growing community of people who are deeply engaged with Yiddish music has set root. They are taking their musical training, their Yiddish literacy, and their connection to traditional music, and moving beyond reviving a repertoire to creating new songs about our lives now.

“I have to say,” Waletzky told me, “it’s been a real thrill for me because I’ve been writing new Yiddish music for a very long time, and the growth of this community of wonderful musicians who have mastered Yiddish music… az men lebt, derlebt, if you live long enough…”

Stravinsky the Anti-Semite

Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is an odd piece that's also oddly well-known, in part because it was featured in Disney's Fantasia. But less well-known about the ballet and orchestral piece Rite of Spring is that its composer was an admitted anti-Semite—though how concerned we should be is still a matter of debate.
In 1989, in the august pages of the New York Review of Bookstwo Stravinsky scholars engaged in a heated exchange on the subject. They agreed that a young Stravinsky wrote to his publisher saying, "I am surprised to have received no proposals from Germany for next season, since my negative attitude toward communism and Judaism—not to put it in stronger terms—is a matter of common knowledge."
One of the writers, Robert Craft, was not shocked by Stravinsky's bigotry because "anti-Semitic remarks between White Russians, like anti-goy remarks between Jews, are not invariably, or even usually… expressions of deep hatreds." The other, Richard F. Taruskin, argued that Stravinsky's anti-Semitism ran much deeper and survived his 1939 immigration to America.

Regardless, Stravinsky's intriguing music is worth celebrating. His bigotry – not so much.

- Marc Davis for Jewniverse

The Original Yiddish Girl Band

A girl group that got its start on a local radio show, and eventually made it big, appearing on late-night talk shows, and touring all over the world. The Spice Girls? The Supremes? Nope. Try the Barry Sisters, whose big hits were all Yiddish covers of popular English songs.
Born Clara and Merna, the 2 sisters were originally billed as the Bagelman Sisters, and achieved some success as Yiddish jazz singers. But when the Andrews Sisters' "Bei Mir Bist Du Schein" became a big hit, the Bagelmans changed their last name to Barry, and joined a radio show out of New York called "Yiddish Melodies in Swing."
As the Barry Sisters, their success grew, particularly with their hit, "Trop'ns Fin Regen Oif Mein Kop," which you may know as "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." The sisters traveled, performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, toured in the Borscht Belt and the Soviet Union, and performed for Israeli troops during the Yom Kippur War.
You can find lots of Barry Sisters songs online, from the expected (a particularly excellent version of "Hava Nagila") to the truly weird ("Makin Whoopee" and "Cabaret" come to mind).

- Tamar Fox for Jewniverse

Urban Jazz Metal Like The Rebbe Sang It

The Alter Rebbe was the founding father of the Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty. He was also a prolific composer, who—in spite of not owning (and not knowing how to play) any instruments—composed several hundred nigunim, or wordless songs. These songs were meant to induce a trancelike, elevated spiritual state.

One wonders what the Alter Rebbe would have thought—or how he would have participated in—a concert of the jazz/metal band Deveykus, who covers the Alter Rebbe's most famous (and eponymous) nigun with simmering cymbals, edge-of-your-seat guitars, and a sickeningly adept trombone on their first album, the just-released Pillar Without Mercy.

At 6 songs and nearly 60 minutes, the album is a brooding, rhythm-intensive monster, an unexpected but seamless potential companion to meditation or shuckeling, that silent swaying that accompanies prayer in many traditional circles. Front man and trombonist Dan Blacksberg calls his music "Hasidic doom metal." He himself might not be a hasid—at least, not on the outside—but his music is deep, loud, hard, and unexpectedly enlightening.

- Matthue Roth for Jewniverse

An American Folksinger With A Hasidic Twist

When you first listen to Levi Robin's tender, breathy vocals and hypnotic fingerpicking, what comes to mind is likely Iron & Wine or Bob Dylan. But if you close your eyes and listen to the lyrics, you might be surprised.
Instead of odes to long-haired beauties and urban chaos, Robin, a 21-year-old Lubavitcher Hasidic folksinger, delivers tried-and-true paeans of spiritual gratitude and God-longing.
One song, the upbeat "No Worries," reads like something out of a Rebbe Nachman tale, with the "bird who sings a song of a lost kingdom." Others are sprinkled with mentions of lion's dens, longings for a promised land, and a call to "open your arms, release the bound"—a line straight out of the morning prayers.
Is acoustic folk ready for a Hasidic takeover? Can a bearded man with sidelocks and a yarmulke rise to the top of the Billboard charts? Sounds unlikely, but it's certainly happened before.
- Elie Lichtschein for Jewniverse

A Hasidic Alt-Rock Girl Band Gets Its Groove On—In Crown Heights

Sorry, guys. Bulletproof Stockings—drummer Dalia Shusterman and singer-songwriter Perl Wolfe—plays for women only.

By Vox Tablet

In 2011, adventure-seeking rock drummer-turned-Hasidic mother of four Dalia Shusterman became a widow. At about the same time, Perl Wolfe, born and raised in the Lubavitch sect of Hasidism, married and divorced, was living with her parents and beginning to write her own music. A few months later, the two women would meet in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and soon after that, begin recording their first EP, titled “Down to the Top.”

Their band name, Bulletproof Stockings—a somewhat derogatory term used to refer to the opaque stockings worn by some Orthodox women—hints at their insider status as Hasidic women, and also at a kind of freedom or irreverence they bring to their enterprise.

Bulletproof Stockings, which also includes cellist Elisheva Maistser, performs for women only, in keeping with kol isha, the prohibition on men hearing women sing that is adhered to among Orthodox Jews. They also dress modestly, as is customary in the Lubavitch community to which they belong. But when playing music, they are not contained. They can be loud and raucous and sooner find common ground with the likes of Jane’s Addiction or the Throwing Muses than with Keren Ann. For that, they've attracted attention well beyond their Crown Heights enclave.

Listen to a talk with Vox Tablet’s Sara Ivry about their musical backgrounds, about ways their faith gets expressed in their music, and about why it’s so important for women to have opportunities to rock out without any guys around. [Running time: 24:46.]

Listen here.

The Temptations Do Fiddler on the Roof

You've heard "Matchmaker, Matchmaker," and you might even know half the lyrics, but you've probably never heard as groovy a take as The Temptations'.

Though best known for their number 1 hit, My Girl, the Temptations' discography is actually incredibly extensive, and in 1969 they joined Diana Ross & the Supremes for a program called GIT on Broadway ("GIT" stood for Getting It Together). The show featured both groups singing some classic Broadway showtunes, including this disco-inspired medley of songs from Fiddler on the Roof.

The surviving video gives a great sense of their far-out renditions of classics like "Sunrise, Sunset" and "If I Were A Rich Man." Our favorite, though, is their soulful and cheeky take on "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" at 5:50.

Break out your bellbottoms and dance along with The Temptations as they bring a whole new vibe to the musical you know and love.

-Tamar Fox

Revolution and Evolution of the American Cantor

Sound of Judaism Has Changed Radically in the Past 30 Years 

By Jenna Weissman Joselit for forward.com 

It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads the Forward that American Jewish life is awash in change, much of it far-reaching and monumental. Most of us can catalog those changes in a flash: intermarriage, the waning support of traditional Jewish charities, an increasingly contested relationship with Israel. But there are other, equally wrenching changes afoot that have not yet garnered the attention they deserve, perhaps because they take place right under our noses and within close range: I have in mind the re-tuning of the American Jewish soundscape, especially that associated with prayer.

Synagogues across the country, and across denominations, too, are rethinking the role of the cantor and with it the nature of the Sabbath and holiday service. Where once formally trained cantors, well-schooled in nusach (traditional liturgy), held sway, more and more congregations are dispensing with them altogether, placing their faith instead in one of their own. Formality has given way to informality; the guitar has supplanted the tuning fork and improvisation trumps stewardship.

Outside the precincts of the sanctuary, within the byways of middle-class, American Jewish life, professionalization is de rigueur. But within the sanctuary, the pendulum has swung in another direction, so much so that it wouldn’t be amiss to speak of the de-professionalization of the cantorate.

Some of this has to do with the growing popularity of independent minyanim, lay-led congregations whose members prefer to go it alone, relegating the clergy to the sidelines. It’s also a reflection, I suspect, of the open- or crowdsourced approach to life in the 21st century, whose enormous appeal inevitably spills over from the quotidian into the sacred. Then again, we might do just as well to look to the recent past for explanations, which is where a website comes into play.

 Continue reading.


 

Why the New ‘Holocaust Music’ Is an Insult to Music—and to Victims of the Shoah

A recent wave of performances turns Jewish composers into shadow images defined only by their status as Hitler’s victims

By James Loeffler for Tablet Magazine

In the never-ending search for ways to remember the Holocaust, the newest media contrivance to appear is “Holocaust Music.” National Public Radio recently profiled an Italian conductor who has embarked on a quixotic campaign to record every note of music composed inside a Nazi concentration camp. Two months ago, New York’s Lincoln Center played host to the Defiant Requiem, a traveling revue that presents a dramatic reenactment of a performance of Verdi’s Requiem that took place in the Terezin concentration camp during World War II. The concert tour has crisscrossed the globe, with headquarters in a summer institute in the Czech Republic. A related documentary film has aired on PBS. On the face of it, these artistic efforts certainly sound legitimate. Aren’t they merely the musical analogue to the literature depicting the horrors of the Holocaust?

They are not. In fact, I’d argue that these efforts represent a tragically misconceived approach that distorts the memory of the Holocaust and slights the very musicians that they purport to honor.

The late Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim spoke of the 614th commandment: not to grant Hitler posthumous victories. Yet one of Hitler’s lasting achievements was to leave behind an anti-Semitic myth, acquired from Richard Wagner, that Jews possess no music of their own. Not only did the Holocaust send many composers into exile and worse, it also killed a decades-long effort to build a Jewish school in modern classical music.

Continue reading.

The Best Lullabies Turn Out to Be Jewish

 By Elissa Strauss


Like probably every mom ever, the arrival of my first child came along with the realization of just how many things I don’t know. One of these was lyrics to lullabies..

During pregnancy I was working on the assumption that I would be able to sing at least a couple lullabies nearly in-full. Instead, as I discovered after I gave birth, I could barely make it to, let alone past, verse two for most of them. Considering this is a time in life when most of us barely have time to brush our teeth, taking time to learn lyrics was most certainly not an option.

Fortunately for me, in his first few months my baby responded better to loud fast songs and erratic dancing – the kind of songs I can actually sing in-full. House favorites included Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” (you know it, “I get knocked down, but I get up again…), Britney Spear’s “Toxic” and perennial favorite, Hava Negila.

But eventually his taste became more pedestrian, and he started responding better to softer, more-soothing music to help him fall asleep. Still lyric-less, I began to hum. And hum and hum and hum. And then I realized I sounded like an orthodox man.

“Dai – Dai-Dai – dai dai – Dai – Dai – Dai,” I’d repeat over and over again, as his body slowly softened in my arms until, eventually, he was asleep.

Continue reading.

God Bless America—or, Mose and His Big Jewish Nose

 
We recently celebrated the 4th of July, so it’s time to join a rousing chorus of that great patriotic American anthem, "When Mose with His Nose Leads the Band."

What, you never heard of it? Maybe you know the tune by a different name: "God Bless America." Sure, the 2 songs share only 6 notes. (skip to 0:53 to hear them!) But they're the most important and familiar 6 notes in the whole song.

You probably know that "God Bless America" was written by the legendary Jewish tunesmith, Irving Berlin (née Israel Beilin). And you might know the song became popular during World War II, when it was sung by American songbook star Kate Smith.

What you likely don't know is that Berlin borrowed the first 6 notes – the ones behind the words "God bless America" – from the chorus of a minor 1906 vaudeville hit about a Jewish bandleader with a prominent schnoz.

A blatant stereotype, yes, but also a neat little musical phrase which, today, is sung at every baseball and hockey game in America. All hail Mose!

Cue the fireworks.

- Marc Davis

STING ROCKS AUSCHWITZ—wait, what?

 
Rock out, Auschwitz! Woohoo! Freebird!

Hold on there. Rock 'n' roll at Auschwitz? Yes, that Auschwitz. The scene of one of the most notorious mass murders in human history. A place where 1 million people—mostly Jews—were killed. One of the most horrifying places on Earth. And now—the home of a great rock 'n' roll festival! Roxanne!!

It's not your imagination. It happened this past weekend. Sting headlined a concert called Life Festival Oświęcim 2013. Yes, that’s the Polish town that hosted the infamous Nazi concentration camp. The concert promoted the message that "there's no place for anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of xenophobia."

A Polish cultural guide explained: "The music festival was created to demonstrate that there is more to the small city of Oświęcim than just the Auschwitz concentration camp, and to create more positive connections in the minds of visiting tourists."

Yes, more positive connections for tourists! Message in a Bottle! Encore! Raise your yahrzeit candles high! Meet you next year in Cambodia at the Pol Pot Smooth Jazz Fest.

- Marc Davis

Sick of Dancing Hasidim Playing Violins? Meet the New Baal Teshuvah Artists of Brooklyn.

 Orthodox Jews new to insular traditions try to integrate the two worlds of strict religion and artistic self-expression

By Sara Trapper Spielman for Tablet Magazine

Just a few miles from the central Chabad-Lubavitch community in Crown Heights, fashionably dressed Orthodox men and women in their 20s and 30s mingled in the candle-lit hall of the Roulette Theater last week, tasting wine from the bar and food from waiters’ stations to benefit Lamplighters, the borough’s Chabad Montessori school. The entertainment spotlighted performers who are baal teshuvahs—a small but influential movement of incoming Chabad artists who are reinventing the arts in the Hasidic community. Noah Lubin, a 33-year-old musician, painter, and art teacher living in a Chabad community in Boston, unveiled 15 original paintings that evening inspired by the children of Lamplighters, which has been revolutionizing educational standards in Crown Heights with its focus on art, Montessori materials, and a dual curriculum that integrates Torah and secular subjects. Headlining the show was musical performer Levi Robin, who just completed a 25-city North American tour this year opening for Jewish reggae star Matisyahu. His solo performance at Roulette, the first one since his tour, included an acoustic guitar and original tunes sung with a raspy voice and ethereal sound that held the audience captive for almost an hour.

During an interview after he left the stage, Robin described his music as “simple songs of a simple man,” reflective of an inner journey he took as a 17-year-old after his band that played in Hollywood clubs dismantled. “I looked deep inside myself, and everything changed dramatically,” Robin said. “There’s a direct correlation between my songwriting and becoming religious.” He admitted his poetic songs are not the typical Jewish sound of stars in the Orthodox world, whose music is often based on traditional European melodies, but he added that he “can’t put my finger on anything not Jewish” about the songs. “Being a Jew is an inner experience of growing in this context. I’m trying to tap into my American roots and express my American Jewish journey.” Robin’s performance followed a mixed-race band (two Hasidic singers and guitarists in the center with an African-American violinist and cellist on either side), led by Hasidic singer Moshe Hecht, whose son attends Lamplighters.

Continue reading.
 
 

The Jewish Drummer Behind "The Boss"

What is it about drummers in the are-they-or-aren't-they Jewish game? Ringo Starr? Got the nose, but no. The Rolling Stones' Charlie Watts? Some say yes, some say no. Max Weinberg? Oh yes.

You probably know Weinberg as Conan O’Brien's former bandleader, or perhaps as the quiet drummer with the big beat behind Bruce Springsteen in the E Street Band. As Mighty Max approaches his 40th year with The Boss, it's time to show some love for one of rock's top-rated drummers.
The Jewish kid from Newark, son of a lawyer and teacher, counts his childhood rabbi as one of the most influential people in his life. He spreads the good word of tzedakah and tikkun olam to Jewish audiences around the country, and he never said no to a little Jew-y shtick-ing with Conan.
Though he didn't join Springsteen until the Born to Run sessions in '74, he’s still arguably the best-known member of the The Boss' tribe – and definitely the most kosher.
- Marc Davis

A Different Kind of Holocaust Music

As one of the founders of musical minimalism, the composer Steven Reich's repertoire is full of impressive credits. But his 1988 Holocaust-inspired, Grammy-winning, 3-movement piece for string quartet Different Trains may be his crowning achievement.

Inspired by memories of the trains Reich took between L.A. and New York to visit his separated parents from 1939 to 1942, this stirring, utterly unique composition grapples with Reich's realization that those same 3 years of train-hopping would have looked very different had he been a Jew in Europe.

Drawing on speech samples collected from a retired Pullman porter who rode the same lines as Reich, several Holocaust survivors, and his old governess—as well as sounds of American and European trains from the '30s and '40s—Reich's music mirrors the pitch and melody of the collected sounds. The piece rolls from America to Europe with a tempo not unlike the cacophonous chug of a train.

But no part of the piece is too on the nose; when the music rests, the memory of the Shoah surfaces, and fills in the silence.

- Zachary Solomon

Nina Simone Sings Milk & Honey

Few songs capture the feeling of a people in exile like "Eretz Zavat Halav." Taken from a biblical passage, it speaks of Israel's abundant natural produce (milk and honey, especially), from the perspective of a people yearning for a better life. Few people sing it with the exquisite mixture of joy and longing as Nina Simone, the eloquent and sublime (non-Jewish) jazz singer, in this little-known live video performance with her band from the 1960s.

It's likely that Ms. Simone learned this song from Shlomo Carlebach, who she met in the 1950s, while they were both getting their starts in their chosen careers: Carlebach playing the folk circuit, Simone as a lounge singer.
Through her other musical work, and her role in the Civil Rights Movement, Simone stayed linked to several prominent Jewish ventures. On her 1965 album Pastel Blues, she also covered the song "Strange Fruit," written by a Jewish songwriter about lynchings in the South. But "Eretz Zavat Halav" is probably her most resplendent entry into the Jewish songbook, capturing both the longing of someone in exile, and the distant memory of how good it feels to be home.

- Matthue Roth

A Prayer for Deadheads

On a quest for Jewish soul at the ‘Blues for Challah’ Grateful Dead Shabbat retreat

“Most Jewish baby-boomers were born into a void,” explains Douglas M. Gertner in a 1999 essay called “Why Are There So Many Jewish Deadheads?” (which comes before “Understanding ‘Show’ as a Deadhead Speech Situation” in Perspectives on the Grateful Dead: Critical Writings). He answers his essay’s titular question with a Portnoysean take on postwar Jewish life: “Lacking both a strong chevra (a sense of community) and finding Judaism devoid of ruach or neshama (spiritual foundation or soul), third-generation American Jews were adrift in search of meaning, purpose, and roots.” Their grandparents were stuck in traditional Judaism, their parents were after the “all-American” lifestyle sold to them through television, and they wanted something different, to be unified in a spiritual community of fellow outsiders converging on a Haight-Ashbury promised land. Dead shows were like Shabbat services, Gertner explains, with their incense and their veggie burritos. Likewise, endless Talmudic analysis met its match in the nitpicking of Dead fans over song lyrics, and “Deep Deadheads” became the counterpart to the ultra-Orthodox in stringency of practice and devotion to their prophet.

There are plenty of Jews who don’t like the Dead, of course. I don’t. Nor did Jonathan Weiss the first time he heard one of their songs. He was lying outside, nestled in a sleeping bag in a field in Pennsylvania. It was the summer of 1970 at Camp Ramah. He was 8 years old. One of his campmates, an older boy, took out a Panasonic tape recorder and pushed play: Jon heard the din of the crowd, then a guitar. “C’mon, Jerry,” the boy asked, impatient. “Get going.” Jon didn’t know who Jerry was. He fell asleep.

A few years later, Jon’s mother decided her bookish son needed a hobby and bought him a stereo. He brought it home and plugged it in—all lights, buttons, flickers, and dials, with nothing to play. He started accumulating music, became a collector—Chicago, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Kiss. Around the time of his bar mitzvah, he was taking karate lessons at a dojo in his synagogue. “Have you heard of the Grateful Dead?” his sensei asked one day, then made Jon a copy of Live/Dead.

 Continue reading. 

The Campaign to Bring Pearl Jam to Israel

There is a running joke in American pop culture about how difficult it is to get into a Pearl Jam concert. The Seattle-based 90s grunge rock band has maintained its popularity over the years and, married with their crusade against Ticketmaster, Pearl Jam remains a tough ticket to get. Nobody tell the Israelis that.


A YouTube video of students from Olam Hamuzika music school in Maccabim-Reut is starting to go viral in Israel and is the latest push in the remarkable Bring Pearl Jam To Israel campaign. In the video, a mixed group of teens is crammed into a small studio where they daringly perform the classic Pearl Jam song Alive on guitars and drums, spurred on by a long-haired conductor in Converse-sneakers.

It’s not the first time young Israeli music students impress with their ability to rock. In fact, this video is inspired by a similar one. The Artik Music School Rock Orchestra from Yehud did a rock rendition of Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were Trouble, which got close to 1.5 million hits on YouTube last year and prompted Swift to tweet about it and post it on her website. Since then, everyone knows that enthusiastic kids covering popular songs are the way to grab the public’s attention. And Israel’s 88FM Radio presenter Ben Red knows it too.

Red initiated the Bring Pearl Jam to Israel campaign last January, and opened a Facebook group devoted to the cause, in hope of fulfilling his dream of seeing his favorite band perform in the Yarkon Park, which has hosted concerts by some of the biggest international stars, from Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney to Madonna and U2. In the first six days, Red’s page gathered 5000 Likes. Today it has more than 23,500 Likes – an extremely impressive number for Israel.

Continue reading.

Like a Rolling Stone

Rock legend Al Kooper opens up to Princeton’s Sean Wilentz about making music with Bob Dylan, and more

Last fall, the people at Tablet asked if I’d be willing to interview my friend Kooper: just put a recorder between us and talk. A couple of months later, Al and I sat in his living room and switched on the little machine and talked about growing up Jewish in black churches, meeting Elvis, playing on “Like a Rolling Stone” with Bob Dylan, and hearing Mike Bloomfield play for the first time. With a bit of editing, this is part of what we said. It’s always a treat to see him and his wife Susan in situ: It means a fine supper, some wonderful chat, and listening to all sorts of stuff from his suitably enormous music collection.

If you keep your ears and eyes open, you might catch word of Al performing, and he always appears in February at his annual birthday bash at B.B. King’s near Times Square. He’s lost not a step. Many more of his stories appear in his acclaimed book, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards, which is still very much in print. And, since you’re reading this on the Internet, go and check out his exceptional music blog, “New Music for Old People.” For now, though, read him getting right to the point at hand.

***

Al Kooper: Culturally, one of the things I don’t like about the Jewish religion is that you can’t play instruments in temple as part of the service, like you can in Baptist places. So, I have attended more services in black Baptists churches than in temple. Why can’t they put instruments into temples? It would increase attendance. All you got is some guy blowing the shofar.

Another thing was, at both my parents’ funerals the rabbi didn’t allow me to play the organ, and I wanted to play the organ. However, when my father-in-law died, they let me.

Continue reading.

 

Curse of the Survivor

Singer Vera Gran was haunted by allegations of Nazi collaboration. A new book asks if survival made her guilty.

In 1930s Warsaw, a young beauty named Vera Gran made a name for herself as a seductive and charming cabaret singer with a voice fans likened to Edith Piaf’s and Marlene Dietrich’s. Gran (born Grynberg) was, along with her mother and sisters and thousands of other Jews, forced to live inside the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. During her time in the ghetto, she continued performing until she managed, with the help of her Polish husband, to escape its confines and go into hiding in 1942. Her family perished.

As devastating as that loss was, Gran’s nightmare took a harrowing new turn after the war, when she was suddenly accused by other survivors—including her accompanist, the pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman—of having collaborated with the Gestapo. Her story captivated the Polish writer Agata Tuszyńska, who was born after the war but whose own mother and grandmother struggled to survive in the Warsaw Ghetto and who feels still the effects of that confinement in her own life. Tuszyńska, in New York as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, made Gran’s acquaintance in Paris, when Gran was old and bitter and ever suspicious. Tuszyńska’s new book is Vera Gran: The Accused, and she talks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about how she convinced the paranoid old woman to talk to her, about the nature of the accusations made against Gran, and about the slow process of discovery that has followed from Tuszyńska’s learning, at age 19, that her mother was a Jew.

Click here to listen to the interview.

 

Isra-Alien: Acoustic Rock for Dueling Mothers-in-Law

It's not so unusual these days for 2 guys with acoustic guitars to play venues around New York City. But it's pretty rare for those 2 guys to have met during their Israeli army service, and to include traditional Jewish simcha dances on their albums.

Enter Isra-Alien, a duo whose music stubbornly defies categorization. As Isra-Alien, Gilad Ben-Zvi and Oren Neiman play rootsy instrumental music – semi-classical, semi-flamenco, semi-Mediterranean. More Gypsy Kings than Garfunkel, more Haifa than Greenwich Village.
The pair has just released their new CD,  Somewhere is Here!.  It starts with a catchy rock number with a riff that could have been lifted from Jethro Tull's Aqualung, then settles into a classical groove. At times, the CD goes dreamy and soft, then spins off into intricate solos and counterpoints. It ends with 3 very different Jewish numbers: a hora, a classic klezmer ditty and a brogez– a wedding dance that revels in the tradition of the difficult mother-in-law.
Oh, and the name, "Isra-Alien?" A play on a common Israeli English mistake.

Interview with Rapper Nissim -- formerly D-Black

It’s not often that a professional rapper who has performed with some of the best known artists in the secular world turns directions and decides to completely rehaul his life. But that’s what Nissim, formerly known as D-Black, has done. This gem of a man can be seen for who he is in this wonderful interview, where he talks about his conversion to Judaism and his re-entry into the world of music with his new identity. 

Meet Nissim!  (Watch Video)