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