Archive for the 'music' Category
Over at the consistently excellent CST blog, Mark Gardner reports on a telling moment at the Palestine International Festival in Ramallah. When 70s disco icons Boney M got up to do their thing, organizers of the festival asked them not to perform their traditional floorfiller, a cover of The Melodians number, “By the Rivers of Babylon.” Why? Because the song contains the words of Psalm 137: “Yea we wept/When we remembered Zion.”
Mark writes:
Its not a sex thing or a sexism thing because “Bang Bang Lulu”, “Baby do You Wanna Bump”, “Gloria, Can you Waddle” and “Love for Sale” were ok.
Its not a colour thing or a nationalist thing, because “Brown Girl in the Ring”, “White Christmas” and “Ra Ra Rasputin” were ok.
Its not a Christian or even a Voodoo thing, because “Mary’s Boy Child”, “Hark the Herald Angel” and “Voodoonight” were ok.
It’s not an artistic merit thing, nor a flares thing, nor a…I could go on…but lets cut to the serious bit. It was a Jewish thing. Not a political thing, nor even an anti-Zionist thing, but a Jewish thing: or rather, an anti-Jewish thing.
It is one thing to demand a boycott of Israel, but it is quite another to demand a boycott of popular cultural references to the historical Jewish longing for Israel, or Zion.
Interestingly, the Jewish longing which Mark refers to, with its motifs of captivity, exile and redemption, has resonated powerfully with many black artists down the years. I have an extensive vinyl collection of classic roots and dub reggae albums from the 1970s; go through the track listings on any one of them and you are more than likely to find a song title containing the word “Zion.” Sadly, this music is apparently now verboten for the Palestinians, courtesy of their culture guardians, who are obsessed with purging anything that might legitimize the Jewish connection to the land of Israel.
Here, then, is the original version of “By the Rivers of Babylon,” by The Melodians. Enjoy.
“You never listened to a word that I said…” Thus did John Lydon, with his muezzin-like wail, kick off one of the greatest songs he ever wrote, “Public Image,” by his post-Sex Pistols group Public Image Limited (PiL to you and me.)
The Israel boycott crowd would be well advised to listen to what Lydon has to say now. And they can listen to him telling the BBC that, as far as he’s concerned, politics everywhere are terrible, not just Israel, and that he’s against all government - “I have been all my life,” he says. You may not agree with Lydon’s trenchant loathing of authority qua authority, but at least he’s morally consistent. And that logic means that the recently-reformed PiL will play in Tel Aviv, unlike Santana, Elvis Costello, The Pixies and others who bowed to the pressure of those who reserve their hatred for Israel alone, and have expressed it by sending Lydon hate mail.
Here, then, are PiL with “Public Image.” Yesher koach, Mr. Lydon.
(Via Engage)
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Move over Elvis Costello. Here’s Jennifer Lopez. And it’s not Israel where she’s declining to perform.
This is a guest post by David Adler, jazz critic and political commentator.
More from David on this story here.
The bloggers of Mondoweiss have worked very hard to convince the public that antisemitism does not exist among the Palestine solidarity movement - indeed, that all such charges of antisemitism are mere subterfuge concocted by “Zionists” to tar critics of Israel, who are by definition pure of heart.
So it’s important to note that Mondoweiss is now voicing support for the Israeli-born, UK-based jazz musician and virulent antisemite Gilad Atzmon.
Continue reading ‘Don’t Let Atzmon Hoodwink America’s Jazz Scene’
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The Tehran Symphony Orchestra has been wending its way around Europe performing a piece nauseatingly entitled “Peace and Friendship Symphony,” by Majid Entezami, and described - in a brilliant piece by Michael Kimmelman - as “a four-movement jeremiad of martial bombast and almost unfathomable incompetence and silliness.” As Kimmelman points out, protests did greet the orchestra in certain cities, but I’m not aware of Naomi Klein, Brian Eno, John Pilger or any other minor radical celebrity urging a boycott.
Here’s our good friend and occasional Z Word contributor David Adler with a charming version of a mellow Christmas tune that sounds just perfect in the twilight of New Year’s Day. In addition to writing about politics, David is a respected jazz critic. He is also, as I know from having met with him, the sort of person with whom debate and even disagreement is instructive and animating, not painful and irritating. And watching his performance below is a pleasing reminder of why a range of interests makes for a happy life. Happy New Year.
This is a guest post by David Adler. A leading writer on jazz, you can visit David’s other site here for essays, reviews and criticism.
Can you imagine a journalist for a liberal newspaper referring in neutral, even vaguely congratulatory terms to an artist’s “provocatively anti-gay rhetoric,” or “provocatively anti-black rhetoric,” or “provocatively anti-Arab rhetoric”?
Fintan O’Toole is a a prominent Irish writer, journalist and theater critic. Writing in the Irish Times, he lays into Israel, accusing it of all of manner lies and obfuscations to disguise the reality of its actions. There are references to other conflicts sprinkled throughout the text but the central intention is clear: strip away the rotten cladding of untruth and show the Israelis to be the blood-soaked monsters that they are.
I have to confess a personal interest in this one. Depeche Mode headlined the first gig I ever went to, back in 1982 at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. At the time, no-one would have predicted that, one quarter of a century later, they would be among the world’s supergroups, but that is what happened. And they will be kicking off their 2009 world tour in Israel.
Continue reading ‘Depeche Mode to Open World Tour in Israel’
