Monthly Archives: June 2011

Elzhi and Yuck try to recreate the 90s

(originally appeared at HipsterJew)

I’m not old enough to have real nostalgia for the 1990s–the oldest music I heard as a kid that I still listen to has to be the singles off Speakerboxx/The Love Below. But I’ve heard more than enough about it—bands were ethically purer, less willing to sell out, hip hop wasn’t commercialized, the Simpsons was still funny. Maybe people just miss Bill Clinton. I really don’t know.

For hip hop, the early 1990s were a crucial time. Especially in New York, where in one year, Biggie Smalls’ Ready to Die and Nas’ Illmatic dropped (Illmatic came first—Ready to Die copied the album cover). Illmatic’s cast a long shadow on many rappers, most of all Nas, who unlike the narrator of Illmatic, had to age and fall off. But everthing about it’s been incredibly influential–Memory Lane begot 50 Cent’s Hate it or Love It, Cam’ron’s Killa Cam, and every other New York rapper’s autobiographical “this is where I get deep” song. It Ain’t Hard To Tell basically invented the enigmatic “lyricism” of underground rap. Even to this day, people want another Illmatic.

So this Detroit rapper Elzhi gave it to them. Elmatic, which dropped for free on May 10th, is literally a track-for-track recreation of 1994′s Illmatic (shades of Borges). Producer Will Sessions used a live band in the studio to make live versions of every beat on Illmatic. The Ahmad Jamal piano of “The World is Yours” sounds fuller interpolated on Elmatic than it did when Pete Rock sampled it. In fact, it sounds thicker than it did on “I Love Music”. When Elzhi begins a verse “to my man J Dilla, god bless your life”, he is simultaneously referencing Nas’ tribute to his dead homie Ill Will, and recontextualizing it in a modern, Detroit-focused context. Throughout Elmatic, Elzhi rephrases old lines Nas used, or echoes their rhythmic cadence, resulting in a fascinating text that clearly aches for the sounds of 90s rap. You can read this as a commentary on the fundamental conservatism epidemic to hip hop, a commentary on the end to New York’s commercial and critical dominance in the music, or as personal expression. Elzhi sounds a lot like Nas vocally, and while he isn’t quite the lyricist the street’s disciple was back in the day, he can drop a dope line. And the beats are invariably dope—at a good price too.

London indie rock band Yuck approach the 90s from a more guitar based context. Singers/guitarists/songwriters Max Bloom and Daniel Blumberg (yes, they’re Jewish) write music that sounds like an amalgamation of all the big sounds of 90s indie—Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, and all those British shoegaze groups which were too ethereal for me to tell apart. Their self titled album dropped February 15. Unlike Elmatic, it isn’t free, but you can’t hate on a band for trying to eat.

For me, it was a mixed bag. But like I said, I’m not old enough for 90s nostalgia. I was disappointed when the lyrics to “Shook Down” turned out to be “You can be my destiny/you can mean that much to me” instead of “you can be my lunch for me”. What I’d heard as a Positively 4th St-esque putdown/come-on was actually just regular indie lyrics. And while I felt the simple, 4 bar figure of “The Wall” for a while, I don’t know if it sustains itself for four minutes. But the last two tracks of the album are both brilliant, easily ipod status. “Rose Gives a Lily” is a melancholy instrumental that suggests so much without explicitly saying it, and the guitar lines stick in your head long after the song is over. “Rubber” is a long noise rock number, all droning guitars and cooing vocals that changes mood and texture several times. You can listen to it closely or have it on in the background, and it sounds tight either way. But a lot of the album was forgettable, especially the cliched rhyming (fire/desire and dreaming/believing were two of the worst offenders). If Yuck always had great songwriting behind the 90s haze, they’d be a force. As of now, they’re interesting, but more like a civil war re-enactment. They have potential though.

“Muted emotion/Pitch corrected” — Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia, Ultra

(Originally appeared at HipsterJew)

 

So I heard the hipster backlash against Odd Future is in effect. We’ve been sick of them over in Boston. DJs need to learn that playing “Yonkers” doesn’t give you cred, hip hop or hipster. My boy who went to the Odd Future show said it really turned him off them forever—hearing people shout along with the rape lyrics, and hearing white kids shouting the n-word and OFWGKTA not caring about that changed what he thought of them. I was never a fan of Tyler to begin with, not that I’m hating. But Frank Ocean isn’t like that. Frank Ocean is dope.

I’ve been listening to Nostalgia, Ultra again lately, it’s deeper than I thought on first listen. I don’t even skip the Coldplay cover anymore. If anything, I respect that the dude opened what’s supposed to be a hipster-friendly mixtape with a Coldplay song. It’s like he’s daring supermarkets to play it. Even so, I like what he does with “Strawberry Swing”. Frank Ocean’s voice is heavily, heavily autotuned, not 808s level, but definitely impossible to ignore. So he’s an r’n'b singer who’s autotuned, and he’s opening with a cover of the most wonderbread band ever. That’s chutzpah.

It’s after “Strawberry Swing” that this joint gets dope though. You’ve probably heard “Novacane”. That’s the one that’s on the radio, the one that’s going to be the first single when this gets a real release. You know, the one where he’s at Coachella with the porn chick and the ice cold lawn/ice blue bong rhyme? The line that sticks with me there is “can’t feel nothing/superhuman/even when I’m fucking viagra popping/every single record autotuning/zero emotion/muted emotion/pitch corrected/computer emotion”. Dude has lyrics. And he described the record for me. Autotuned, muted emotion pretty much says it all. “Novacane” has ridiculously compressed drums and distant keys—it feels flat, narcotic. This isn’t a sex jam like most would make. This is recreational antidepressant use in musical form.

Ocean turns up the feeling for “We All Try”. Over similarly subdued production (a motif on the album), he sings about “marriage….between love and love….not between a man and woman” (told you this wasn’t like the rest of Odd Future) and a dissipating relationship between him and a nameless girl. The echoey guitar and laconic give this a cinematic feel, and the autotuned crooning is amazing—it means there’s always a layer of distance between Ocean and the emotions he’s allegedly singing about. I feel this cut.

“Songs For Women” is almost a deconstruction of the R’n'B singer. Ocean talks about how he sings to get girls, then feels emasculated when his girl plays Drake and Trey Songs in the car and doesn’t listen to his own joints. It’s sad and funny, and really doesn’t sound like R’n'B, lyrically. R’n'B’s never been this intellectualized.

That’s what I feel is different about Frank Ocean. R’n'B’s always been about pouring out emotion—preferably in a 16 bar hook you can sell to the highest bidder. Ocean’s a much better songwriter than he is singer, and much better at albums than he is at hooks. I hear a lot of indie influence, and honestly, cynicism (and I’m not talking about sexual exploitation. R’n'B did that) is something radically new for the genre—but can an autotuned singer who writes his own lyrics really be classified as R’n'B?

Whatever it is, there’s great material on this album; the way LoveCrimes gets chopped and screwed at the end a la The-Dream, the Mass-Appeal lite keyboard riff on Dust, even some of the interludes (I heard the same Eyes Wide Shut sample on LoveCrimes as on Louis Logic’s All Girls Cheat.) Most of all, there’s the weird texture of the songs: without a thick, soulful vocal tone, R’n'B tracks have a lot of space, so you’re continually reminded of what’s missing here. The mixtape-level audio quality is also a benefit here—Ocean’s re-releasing this album with Def Jam, and hopefully they won’t remaster it. This isn’t high fidelity stuff. This is the album for when you struck out at the club or the party got broken up, and you’re in your bedroom, drunk, horny, and crashing fast

Beastie Boys — Hot Sauce Committee Part Two. Call it arthritis rap.

(Originally posted at New Voices, to much controversy)

Maybe hip hop has just moved on from the Beastie Boys.

I don’t want to be the one to say it, but listening to Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is, while not painful, not something I’d do more than twice. All the problems of the album you can hear on track 3, “OK”; a keyboardy beat that sounds like it’s going for dubstep influence but ends up just sounding budget, a cheesy vocoded hook, and (this is key), flows that just sound dated. The Beastie Boys have never been the lyrical cats with flow for days, but here they come off as old dudes trying to do what the kids are doing, and pulling a back muscle in the process.

Look at the colors, maaaaan

A Nas guest verse on “Too Many Rappers” has some interesting bars, but more because they sound like something Jay-Z could have used in Takeover. Seriously, doesn’t “You ain’t a shot, a mobster, or a drug dealer/a slug peeler you’re not, mafioso, no” sound more like it’s about Escobar himself than the archetypical sucker MC? The bars from the Yidden aren’t too great either.

This is not to say that that there’s no good ish on the album— leadoff track “Make Some Noise” brings the punk energy the Beasties always had over a buzzy, bluesy guitar riff and boom-bap drums. But so many of the beats here are just not good, honestly just embarrassing— I respect that the Beastie Boys are trying to get experimental, but it doesn’t feel like they have the musical vocabulary to expand that much. And their flows are very limited—when Andre 3000 or MF Doom put together bizarre soundscapes, they brought weird offbeat flows too, but the Beastie Boys still rap like they did in the 1980s. If they want to get further away from their classic sound, they seriously need to improve their flows.

This is not to in any way spit on their legacy—just today I was thinking how the Beastie Boys were the first cats to really be callous about sex and violence like that. It’s a short walk from “”Now my name is M.C.A. I’ve got a license to kill/I think you know what time it is it’s time to get ill/Now what do we have here an outlaw and his beer/I run this land, you understand I make myself clear” to Jay’s “Y’all don’t want to witness s—/we squeeze hammers mang/bullets breeze bayou/like Lousiana mang”. It’s the same attitude, same cynical distance. It’s Jewishness in rap. Tell me Asher Roth and Mac Miller aren’t just doing “You Gotta Fight For Your Right to Party” minus the irony, swag, and credibility. The Beastie Boys are pioneers.

But that doesn’t change the hard fact— this isn’t a good album. It’s always hard when punks get old, especially when they don’t know music theory. Right now, the Beastie Boys are old school cats trying to make beats that don’t bump, sounding out of date. Call it arthritis rap.

Maybe hip hop has just moved on from the Beastie Boys.

I don’t want to be the one to say it, but listening to Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is, while not painful, not something I’d do more than twice. All the problems of the album you can hear on track 3, “OK”; a keyboardy beat that sounds like it’s going for dubstep influence but ends up just sounding budget, a cheesy vocoded hook, and (this is key), flows that just sound dated. The Beastie Boys have never been the lyrical cats with flow for days, but here they come off as old dudes trying to do what the kids are doing, and pulling a back muscle in the process.

Yemen Blues S/T

(originally appeared at New Voices)

 

I saw (and interviewed) Yemen Blues back in March, when they did a set for the Boston Jewish Music Festival. Their album hadn’t come out yet, but live they were a tight band, experienced sounding. Their album came out a few days ago and I copped it, mostly on the strength of that concert. Considering it’s an hour long, ten dollars is not a bad price.

 

“We recorded the CD live in one room, nothing between us. I like it more this way, live in studio.”

 

The band’s leader Ravid Kahalani told me this. The production on Yemen Blues is fairly basic, but it’s well done. Kahalani’s nasal, Yemenite vocals are far up in the mix, along with the basslines and the percussion. Afropop sounding horn blasts fill in the mid range. Without chord progressions, most of the songs are structured around the basslines, short melodic figures that remind me of 1960s pop groups.

The songs themselves are complicated pieces, most of them going longer than 5 minutes, with time signature and tempo changes taking the place of modulations. The intro track “Wamid”, where fuzzed out vocals (or is it a guitar?) provide the backup for Kahalini’s improvised sounding singing starts the album strong, and the overall sound is very distinctive, which is always a huge plus in world music. For me though, without enough (any) knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic to understand the lyrics, I got tired of a lot of the faster material that dominates the middle of the album, where everything turns into a fast jam. Still, the switch from eerie wailing over slow strings to spaghetti western menace on the title track is striking. And the Bo Diddley beat on “Un Min Al Yaman” is sublimely executed. The slowest track on the album, “Trap La Verite”, reminds me of Sam Cooke’s A Change is Going to Come, with the interplay between horns and strings– but Kahalani’s piercing vocals keep this music unmistakably middle eastern.

 

“We found some kind of musical language…”

 

Overall, it’s a strong first album, although like Kahalani said, they’re more of a live band, for now at least. The same songs that are high-energy live can be taxing on the ear on record, especially after three of them in a row. And, like many first albums, it feels crammed, with more ideas per song than the listener can easily process (although this may partly be because of the language barrier.). No question though, it shows a lot of promise, the way Kahalani integrates his different influences with a distinctive composing style, and the way it modernizes traditional Yemenite music. I’m definitely putting a lot of the songs on replay status. #Cosign.

Step in the arena

(Originally appeared at New Voices)

When I’m in a cypher, I don’t have time to plan my rhyme, I don’t even want to use that part of the brain. I start thinking about your rhyme scheme, or even consciously formulate a rhyme and I lose the beat– and the beat is everything. A rapper who establishes a rhythm with their voice might not say anything meaningful, anything funny, anything dope, but they won’t get laughed out of the cypher. And yes, I’ve been laughed out of the cypher.
The only thing worse than losing the beat is choking—when you open your mouth and no words come out. Think 8 mile. That’s never been me, but I’ve seen it happen a lot. My boy’s a talented producer, but he isn’t a rapper. Sometimes he drops a hot verse when he freestyles. Sometimes he raps about anime characters. Once he shouted out fake dead homies (“Rest in piece Li’l Jamal, and Li’l Bobby….what did I say?”). But about half the time he just says one line, pauses to think, and never stops pausing. Verbal impotency.

It’s not easy to think of words at 88 BPM—anyone who tries to drop a freestyle without having practiced just won’t, it’s a skill that’s hard to earn. The great freestylers– Mos Def, Ludacris, Black Thought, they’ve been doing it for years, maybe their whole lives. What a real MC does in a cypher is different, it isn’t like the mortals. Look at this Ludacris freestyle“Snatch the furniture, here’s the plan, kidnap Big Tigger and hold him for ten grand/tell BET if they want to see him again, bring free Sinaa Lathan and a bottle of gin.”

He freestyles a punchline, shouting the last line, audibly laughing after he finishes it. The energy he puts into his delivery is something else.

“Jump back, I can’t stand myself/just bought a crib in Miami just to tan myself.”

The wordplay here is incredible, from the assonance in jump back/just bought/just to, to the multisyllabic rhyme that makes the punchline. Thematically, he parodies the commercialist aspects of rap, with “enough money in the chain to keep a country fed”, at the same time embodying them.. He’s thinking so fast, poetic virtuosity, improvising like a jazz cat, with words. That “WHAT?” he shouts at the end, extemporaneous to the text and several seconds after his last line, like it’s taken him time to process just how dope his freestyle was, doesn’t add anything to the freestyle, but it’s a good appraisal of it. In a minute and a half, Ludacris freestyles a better verse than most could write.
For people who aren’t mic gods, it isn’t like that. A few times I’ve heard someone drop a great verse, I’ve been like “word, that was freestyled?”, and I’ve heard the rappers answer “Nah, that was a pre.” There’s always some guilt in their voices, they know you shouldn’t pass off a pre as a free, claim you’re something you’re not. I’ve heard too many average verses which rhyme, which have no screwups, but sound like every other verse in every other cypher.  And I’ve heard great freestyles, from cats who can’t normally rap that well, who just go in for two minutes like they can’t even stop, who have the people nodding to their lyrics, not even hearing the flaws in the moment, who only stop rapping when they’re physically out of breath. Once in a while, I’ve been that cat.

 

Kind of kosher

(originally appeared at New Voices)

 

It’s funny, to my non-Jewish friends, I’m that guy that’s really Jewish. I have a mezuzah up on my front door and my bedroom door; I have thick glasses and a not insignificant nose; I work at a synagogue. And I kind of keep kosher. My apartment, for example, is kosher. I have two sets of pots and pans, I use plastic plates a lot, and I buy Hebrew Nationals. It’s not kosher though. One of my roommates used my dairy pot to cook chicken noodle soup, and you better believe I didn’t throw it away. And the silverware, there’s one set for my roommates, and one set for me, but if you think about it, there’s no way that actually works to separate meat and milchig. So my apartment’s not really strictly kosher, I try though. My roommates see me rigorously avoiding bacon and cheeseburgers and think I must be really religious. Which is funny, because I’m not.

When I’m eating out, my practice is more or less “if it’s not pork, it’s kosher”. So I won’t eat lobster or pork chops, but honestly, I know they fry with butter back in the kitchen at the diner. The thing is, I live in Allston. Vietnamese food, while delicious, isn’t hechshered. And why would I ask if there’s butter spread on the banh mi? It could be mayonnaise. It could be fish sauce. On one level, that’s something I miss about Israel—I loved keeping kosher without really thinking about it. But kosher restaurants in the US are rare, and more importantly, very expensive. I pay 3.50 for a banh mi. I’d pay 12 dollars for a sandwich from a kosher deli. Not to mention I’d have to walk a mile or so, Allston has around no kosher restaurants. It does have some good halal places though.

So maybe I semi-traditionally practice Kosher. Growing up in my parents’ house, we never had pork or shrimp in the house, and I’ve never eaten them. And I never knowingly mix milk and meat, but I don’t try to know all that much. I won’t eat pizza that has meat on it, and I won’t order say, lamb gyros because of the tzatzki sauce. But it’s more of a habit to me than a lifestyle. It’s more that I don’t eat treif. For Pesach I’m thinking just don’t eat in the apartment, since I can’t throw out other peoples’ chametz and it’s not like I eat much there but grilled cheese, Hebrew Nationals, and cereal. Not at the same time though.

The Wu Emperors have no clothes: Raekwon at the Middle East

(originally appeared at HipsterJew)

Magno Garcia attacks the mic live. He has the old school flow of G Rap or early Nas, but he isn’t rapping about coke and guns. On his mixtape, he sounds like a traditional East Coast MC, more lyrical than most, but live he’s on some other shit, shouting and stomping on beats, while hitting every multisyllabic phrase with finesse. The first time I saw his act, his people from Chelsea filled the floor of the Middle East, throwing their hands up, getting hype. This time, Chelsea wasn’t here. Understandable, it was a Monday. Magno Garcia and DJ/producer Evildewer were opening for Raekwon, first act, around 8:45.

The sound was muddy, too bass heavy. Standing close to the stage, the beats were all low end and no theory. But bad sound at a hip hop show is nothing new. And Magno Garcia killed his set anyway.

“I felt confident on stage.” he said after. “I heard people complaining about the vocals though, the levels.”

“Yeah, the bass was real loud.” I said. “What did you think of Rae’s show?”

“I thought he put on a good performance, I would have liked to see other wu members, but that’s hard to do at the middle east.”
“I thought the set was a little short.” I said.

The other openers were of mixed quality. There were some fat white dudes with EIRE and shamrock tattoos who I disliked on principle, as well as for their crap music. Too much of Boston rap is Irish dudes who think they’re hard rapping about drug shit they know nothing about. They were too hard, too one dimensional, too Southie.

There were some alright acts, not as wack as the Irish guys but not memorable. Also there was Retrospek. I’d seen them before at a show over at Church in a cypher, they’re a good live act. MCs JuneLyfe and A. Spendacash clown around a lot on stage, trading phrases and filling in each others lines. It’s kind of old school, but when you think about the skill it takes to do that, you have to respect it. And it adds a lot live. Retrospek don’t act like they’re taking themselves seriously, and because of that, their set is just fun. I wish more live hip hop was fun. I talked to JuneLyfe after the show.

 

Dr. K: How does your group get to the point where you’re opening for Raekwon?

JuneLyfe: Just basically working hard man, sticking to the books, being well in tune with the right people.

Dr. K: You’re from Boston, right?

JuneLyfe: Definitely. Specifically Dorchester, borderline of Roxbury

Dr. K: You have an album out?

JuneLyfe: We have 2 eps out, one we just released, Boom Bap and Beyond, one we did back in 2009, SOMESHYTWEDID.

Dr. K: Word. What did you think of Rae’s show?

JuneLyfe: Rae’s an incredible artist man, the energy is always there, you know, get the people hyped up, crowd participation is always the key for everyone to have a good time, he brought the funk

Dr. K: what do you see happening in hip hop?

JuneLyfe: Honestly, I’m just glad everyone’s enjoying the realness still, there’s still some lyricism, but you know, everyone’s just having fun, I just make sure I keep myself with the ones who actually like my flow.

 

So at 11:00 Raekwon was scheduled to go on. He didn’t come on til 11:40. Forty minutes isn’t too bad, but in Boston the last trains leave at 12:30. Midnight is when you have to go if you’re trying to catch the T, especially if you have to transfer. My friends had to transfer. I saw a lot of people leaving the club before his set was done. The set was good, I guess. The crowd was really into it, shouting out the lyrics to his songs. Raekwon’s a great performer when he’s actually rapping.

It’s too bad there wasn’t a lot of rapping. Raekwon was on stage for maybe 50 minutes, and talking for about half of it. I tweeted some of his better lines.

“Word to the sneakers I got on n-, they go in.”

“Turn the lights down except the green one! Straight up take the other colors off. Take off the fruity flavors quick, b.”

“Aw, the bruins? You know I fux with the bruins!”
“Money, yeah! Drugs!”
Along with this I heard some of my favorite verses of 90s hip hop, from Nas’ verse on “Verbal Intercourse” to Ghostface’s verse on “Criminology?, to Raekwon’s verse on “C.R.E.A.M.”. It was cool, but, you know, it’s a big rap artist. He had hypemen doing some of his lines, he only did about a verse from each song. I mean no question the crowd was amped, I was shouting along with them, but the whole time I was thinking “this is underwhelming.” When the performer isn’t actually making good music, and people are there to see the LEGEND, it feels dangerously close to classic rock. I defend rappers, but it really feels like they don’t give a shit about their shows.

I mean, Raekwon was good. I’m glad I didn’t pay full price for my ticket though. A fifty minute set is way too short for a $30 show. The sad thing is, this is good for major label rap. It’s hard to expect more. But why are all the best hip hop shows I see underground acts? Nas was disappointing, and Louis Logic was incredible. And why do people act like Raekwon and the Wu put on good shows? They start late, they end early. “MCs, B.” Raekwon said. “We was MCs before we was rappers.”

I don’t want to say there’s a difference between rap and hip hop, but live shows make it feel that way.

Outside after the show I was interviewing Magno Garcia before he drove back to Chelsea. I was wondering if I’d have to pay for a taxi back—staying til the end of Raekwon’s set made catching the bus back to Allston only a possibility.

 

Dr K: Any shoutouts?

Magno Garcia: Shout out to EvilDewer, everybody in Boston that keeps doing their thing, showing that real hip hop is still alive in this city.

The little things

(Originally appeared at New Voices)

It was small stuff, but it bothered me.
3:45 PM, I was waiting for the bus, hoping I wouldn’t be late for work. It was Sunday afternoon, sunny out—I couldn’t find my ipod before I left my apartment so the wait was killing me. You know, playing tetris on my phone, texting people I don’t really talk to, trying to kill time.
Anyway I was sitting on the bench, and on the other side of the bench, there was this guy on a cell phone. Picture the the Citizen from Ulysses, on some German American Bund status, blond football player look. He had on a green buttondown shirt with a pink tie, expensive shoes. He probably went from the frat house to his dad’s investment firm. You got the visual?

So he was on his phone, talking, I wasn’t trying to listen but he was loud and I didn’t have anything going on.

“Yeah, dad’s giving me less now, he says I have to pay for half on the condo…I know bro…just because I move up a tax bracket.”

At this point I was trying not to laugh, that this guy was complaining that his dad gave him less money ever since he “moved up a tax bracket”. We should all be so lucky. Then he dropped the bomb.

“Yeah, he’s jewing me.”

I jerked up, I couldn’t believe he said that. In public. My first thought was, jump him, let him know he can’t say that stuff about Jews, we aren’t skinny diaspora nebbishes anymore, but I couldn’t. Physically, and logistically. I had to get to work. So I started thinking about what I could say.

“Hey man, you’re going to hell.” Too apocalyptic.

“You’re a bad person.” On point but weak.

“You spoiled, rich, racist, pathetic” Getting there.

But I didn’t say anything. Why bother? He’d just say something nasty back and laugh. He knew he was a jerk, but he had a rich dad. Nothing I could say would change that. He’d still be privileged, and I’d still be waiting for the bus. I should have said something, he crossed several lines, how could I let strangers say antisemitic crap and not call them on it? I’d feel better if I said something, there’s so much I could say. But I didn’t say anything.

So there I was, waiting for the bus, staring at my feet, feeling like a minority. A minute or two later he walked away. I tried not to trip. It was just one thing. But then I started thinking, about the BDS posters at the felafel place, about the time the guy at the corner store said “you must have a lot of money” when I was dressed as a Chassid for halloween, about how there were three churches, four halal restaurants, and no kosher places in my neighborhood. And now this. It was a little thing, but it bothered me.

 

Jewish mysticism as played by Frank London and Divine Sparks

(Originally appeared at New Voices as part of my coverage of the Boston Jewish Music Festival)

 

One of the musicians told me Divine Sparks didn’t have as much rehearsal time as they thought they needed. From the second balcony of the Berklee performance center, the sound mixing seemed uneven, the guitar close to inaudible. Despite these kinks, this was one of the more interesting concerts I’ve gone to, to say the least.

Quick background: Divine Sparks was the brainchild of Frank London, best known as the trumpet player from the Klezmatics. It was a one-off show, with a band composed of double bass, drums, percussion, guitar, organ, piano, and trumpet. They played backing to five chazzanot, trained singers of Jewish religious music. The material was all religious, in Hebrew. The singers were smooth, mostly singing in that sweet, reedy register typical of Jewish religious singers. And the band was surprisingly loud.

For the first ten minutes, they played an instrumental version of “Ono HaShem”, slow, dominated by London’s trumpet. Comparisons to Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain”occurred to me. Then the drums dropped, and the concert got loud. They played 16 songs over more than two hours, switching singers on every track. It was really a different sound, too focused on vocals to be jazz, too improvised for opera. Listen to this and imagine a cantor over it. Unique. I wish there was a video.

I wasn’t familiar with the material, to say the least, but Aaron Bensoussan’s performance of L’cha Dodi, where he accompanied himself on oud, stuck in my head. I got the chance to talk to him after the show.

“I learned to play oud when I was very young, in morocco, I was taught by a master of players.” he told me. “I was 13. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time, but I learned more in new york. A lot of what I play I just feel, I’m not a technical player, I mix Ashkenazic, and blues, and African music, I’m not tied to the structure.” Where had I heard that before?

Frank London was surrounded by friends congratulating him after the show, but I got a chance to talk to him.

Max Elstein Keisler: There was a lot of improvisation here, did you work from entirely from a setlist?

Frank London: With this it was way too complicated to be spontaneous. With five different singers, we had to know what were doing. For me the with whole intention of this concert, there were a number of important goals that I think we came really close to doing, and the setlist was one of the crucial things. I wanted the concert to have a spiritual connectedness and a spiritual flow. Heschel has an an expression, a service has an emotional high point, and radical amazement, I waned the concert to have a flow and reach an epiphany, and it really did.

MEK: Yeah, you could feel the structure. Like L’cha Dodi at the halfway point.

FL: Yeah, with L’cha Dodi for example. The next level, because it can always get better, what I didn’t pay attention to and I apologize, is making sure the texts followed a connectedness and a relatedness. So the next level would be to have the same thing. Even though this isn’t a service, its not Shabbat, its not shavrot, we’re not doing a service, there sill would be a way for the texts to inform each other, that would be the next level, to have the texts inform each other

MEK: So do you have plans to continue with this project?

FL: V’s HaShem, that’s the short answer. The long answer, the real answer, is that this project is one step in a journey that’s been going on for about ten years of trying to learn this music, trying to play it, and finding ways to present it, so this was a big step for me on this way, on this journey. If we never do this exact concert again, I hope to do more concerts like this

MEK: This being chassidic music?

FL: This being a concentration on chazzanot, and the focusing of strictly Jewish spiritual music, with a highly refined sense of aesthetics but in a way that is geared to a mystical, spiritual experience.

 

I’ll say this, it was definitely a new sound. Big ups to London for getting this together. It’s impressive to have a crowd with a mix of secular and Chassidic Jews, and it’s a good look to explore the mystical traditions of Judaism, which have been partly lost since the Haskalah. Bensoussan put it poetically. “Working with the other musicians, thank god, this is what makes our spiritual life. We get the message out, we connect with the creator.”

Yemen Blues go in

(originally appeared at New Voices as part of my coverage of the Boston Jewish Music Festival)

 

On stage, Yemen Blues have a manic energy. On the left side of the stage, Hilla Epstein and Galia Hai play cello and viola, adding stability to a cacophonous sound. On the right side, the horn section of Avi Lebovich, Itamar Borochov and Hadar Noiberg add funk-styled horn blasts and occasional backup vocals. In the back, Rony Iwyrn and Yohai Cohen play percussion. And center stage, Omer Avital and band leader Ravid Kahalani go completely insane. Avital plays bass and mugs like a glam metal guy in the 1980s, rocking big shades and a bigger Jewfro. Kahalani, wearing what I think might be a woman’s pantsuit, and a silver chain, runs around the stage, beats on a metal box, and sings like a Yemenite chazzan on tiger blood. His vocals (mostly in Hebrew, with some Arabic), nasal and piercing, are the most traditional part of the sound. They ride the percussion, which overdrives like an 808 drum machine, with the flow of someone who understands African music. It’s a powerful sound, like funk without the guitar, like Yemenite music gone electrocuted, like Israeli pop gone hardcore. I went backstage before the show to interview Kahalani.

 

Max Elstein Keisler: How did Yemen Blues begin?

Ravid Kahalani: It all began three years ago when I met Omer Avital. I was amazed by his arrangements, and way of working, we started jamming, and just dived in to the music. We started to think about what instruments to bring in. We didn’t want to bring in harmonic instruments so we could play Arab microtones. It was a really natural, organic process. I came with my vision, I bring the music and the lyrics, Omer brings the orchestration and the musical directing

MEK: You don’t use Western harmonies?

RK: We use classical influence, the cello and the viola are coming from a classical background, Omer is coming from a jazz background.

MEK: But you don’t use chord progressions?

RK: I have no rules. The first song I wrote was influenced by West African melodies. I can do one song which is more west african, I can do one which is more funk. I grew up on Yemenite music.

I was taught by my father lots of Yemenite chants, and how to sing the prayers, I left it all and went to american blues, to funk, to soul music, blues. I understand with the process of Yemen blues, blues is a very deep word, its not just American blues, its something from Africa, it came from Mali.

There is Yemenite blues, there is Mauritanian blues for me, I see blues as soul singing, the same thing as Yemenite guys singing chants, and Afro-american guys from Mississippi singing the blues

MEK: Word.

 

There were some questions I meant to ask him that I didn’t. Why aren’t your jeans skinny? How do you write songs without a guitar or piano? It’s probably a good thing I didn’t ask the first one. Although seriously, how do you have nine people in a band and none of them are rocking skinnies? But that’s not the point. Yemen Blues are a dope live band, willing to go IN in a way hipsters and college kids aren’t. And I saw them in a theater, in an audience whose demographics skewed toward the balding. Normally they play festivals.

They’re definitely on the come-up. Once they get a label and a US release of their album, I could see them blowing up. Bands like Gogol Bordello and Balkan Beatbox set a precedent, although Yemen Blues is less poppy than Gogol Bordello, and doesn’t have the electronic elements of Balkan Beatbox, for now. At the very least they’ll play more dope shows. They’ve already played the Montreal Jazz Fest and WOMEX, which is impressive for a band that’s only been touring a year. Kahalani has plans for the music too. “I want to try to get to Sly Stone.” he told me. “Get him to sing on my songs.” Sly pretty much invented tripped out funk with There’s A Riot Going On, but hasn’t made an album since the early 1980s. He’s a weird choice for a collaboration, considering how forgotten he is in the US. But Kahalani’s into roots.