A taste of Judea on Christmas day

And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:

They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:

Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.  (Exodus 32:7-10)

Yea, a stiffnecked and intransigent people.  Yet their music is so much easier on the ears come Christmastime than what has been polluting airwaves for the past several weeks.  Recently I had to wait in a parking lot for thirty minutes while the local strip mall was blasting Christmas music through two enormous speakers at the building's entrance--yes, forcing not only customers but hapless bystanders to suffer through nu-alternative Christmas classics by The Trans-Siberian Orchestra and others.  I complained, but was told the landlord liked it that way for the holidays.  When I went inside and simply turned off the CD player that was responsible for this terrible infringement of my rights, I'm sorry I didn't take the CD with me; a few minutes later another employee went in, turned it back on, made it louder, and then locked the door.

MP3s, videos, and rants below the jump!...

However, if the proprietor had been playing, say, Naftule Brandwein's recordings from the early 1920s, reissued as King of the Klezmer Clarinet (Rounder, 1997), I think I could have handled it.  Hell, I would have loved it.  Or perhaps some of the classic Jewish songs set to rock'n'roll rhythms on Reb Shlomo's The Best of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (??, 2002) for a more contemporary feel.  Even the rather tawdry ditties on Theo Bikel's Sings Yiddish Theatre and Folk Songs (Elektra, 1965) would have left me quite happy.  But The Trans-Siberian Orchestra?  Who the fuck listens to that?  (Well, a lot of people, actually--they sell a million albums a year.)  Three things that should immediately tell you this band "doesn't know shit about rock and roll": 1.) they wear suits, 2.) they're all over 40, and 3.) they play Christmas music.  One of the biggest scams ever put over on the American people in the name of holiday cheer.

Let's face it: Christian music is boring.  Except perhaps for a well-executed Te Deum, quite moving and beautiful in its own right, the whole genre is wallowing in the tepid, self-satisfying indulgence that comes with having conquered and ruled the Western world for over 2,000 years.  When I watched Cecil B. Demille's The Sign of the Cross (1932) recently, I found myself much more interested in the Roman decadence--the slinky rhythms at odds with each other and the permanently reclining bodies--than the naive and pious Christian community, their songs unified and monotonous, their bodies huddled together in a  feeble attempt at monumentality.  Even with the glowing success of Western Christendom, its music has produced little of value; only now it is louder, aided by electric guitars and, more volatile, electric violins.  One could make an argument for gospel, but even this is more the product of the African-American community than the white, Anglo-Saxon tradition I am referring to.  In fact, for the past 100+ years, it seems that only oppressed and minority groups (and a handful of eccentrics from the dominant classes) are capable of producing real musical art.  As a professor of mine, Neil Christian Pages, once said: This would be a boring, boring country without homosexuals.

(As far as I'm concerned, the only Christmas album worthy of anyone's attention this year is David Peel's Marijuana Christmas release from 2008--quite popular on the blogosphere, and available here and here, though the owner of the latter blog felt it necessary to include Christmas-themed pornography in his .zip file.  "Dope the Halls With Marijuana" indeed.)

Which brings me back to Jewish music and why we should be listening to it today.  It's more fun.  It swings.  It has feeling and pathos and soul that isn't so preconditioned in its listeners by mass culture.  There's none of that cloying sweetness, that disgusting Hallmark quality that reminds the listener that s/he is now the subject of an experience not really his/her own, but the abstract experience of abstract Masses.  Christmas music is not unlike Dwight Macdonald's definition of kitsch oh so many years ago: "More sexy but not more sexual, the relation between the terms being similar to that of sentimentality to sentiment or modernistic to modern, or arty to art."  Christmasy to Christmas.  Hearing the mournful quality of Jewish music today can perhaps reverse some of this damage.

I'm by no means an authority on the subject.  In fact, up until a few years ago I could number myself among the faction of self-hating Jews.  Christmas music is the locus of a particularly embittering memory: being made fun of in middle school during the holiday season because Hebrew songs were "not in English" and therefore "retarded".  For this reason, I've felt obliged to include Pussy Galore's anti-semitic anthem, "You Look Like a Jew", off their (classic?) LP, Groovy Hate Fuck (Vinyl Drip, 1987).

 But the joke's on them!  I don't see any "Radical Christian Culture" series around to compete with John Zorn's imprint in celebration of the Chosen People.  Recently I've been going through the Tzadik catalogue, a few of my favorites in the Radical Jewish section being the folky Nigunim by Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg and Uri Caine (Tzadik, 1998), Children of Israel by Danny Zamir (2002) which is equal parts Coltrane and klezmer, and the odd sonic mysticism of The Alter Rebbe's Nigun by Oren Ambarchi and Robbie Avenaim (1999).  Somewhat related to the Tzadik series, where he records as Raz Mesinai, is Badawi's classic album of Jewish-influenced illbient and dub reggae, Jerusalem Under Fire (ROIR, 1997).

Speaking of which, I feel that it's appropriate to include several reggae gems with this post considering the genre's Judeo-centrism.  A few Zion-flavored MP3s by the likes of Prince Far I, Burning Spear and Garnett Silk appear at the bottom along with everything else.

If you're feeling particularly anti-Christmas today, I recommend one of my favorite films: John Waters' Female Trouble (1974), particularly this scene where a disastrous misstep in gift-giving acts as the catalyst for Divine's extended spree of crime, debauchery and... murder!

Also, this isn't by any means good.  But it's rather amusing.

01 - Naftule Brandwein - Freit Sich, Yiddelach (Be Happy, Jews).mp3

02 - Naftule Brandwein - Der Yid In Jerusaleim.mp3

03 - Shlomo Carlebach -  V'haer Eneinu.m4a

04 - Shlomo Carlebach - Samchem.m4a

05 - Theodore Bikel - Kalt Vasser.mp3

06 - Theodore Bikel - Doina.mp3

07 - London, Sklamberg & Caine - Belzer Medley.mp3

08 - Danny Zamir - Aley Giv' Ah Bagalil.mp3

09 - Oren Ambarchi & Robbie Avenaim - Atzilut [Emanation].mp3

10 - Badawi - Semetic Stepper.mp3

11 - Badawi - Mt. Zion Dub.mp3

12 - Burning Spear - Jordan River.mp3

13 - Garnett Silk - Zion In A Vision.mp3

14 - Prince Far I - Moses, Moses.mp3

15 - Pussy Galore - You Look Like a Jew.mp3

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=T0YUK4H5

Comments

[Seth Watter]

MP3s hosted on the WFMU space hopefully coming soon.

[Your Shiksa]

Merry Christmas, Scrooge.

Try Anonymous 4 for some Christmas music you can stomach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSHUwpTezK0&feature=related

[s.w.]

My shiksa?! I have to admit I've always wanted one, if only to irritate my parents. I guess Christmas isn't so bad after all.

[Ralphine]

Why do you subject us to this horrible cacophany?

[Con]

"Even with the glowing success of Western Christendom, its music has produced little of value; only now it is louder, aided by electric guitars and, more volatile, electric violins. One could make an argument for gospel, but even this is more the product of the African-American community than the white, Anglo-Saxon tradition I am referring to."

I agree with some of what you wrote, but not this. Why are black Americans outside of Western Christendom in a way?

I hope it is not because, in your worldview, there are good guys who can do no wrong (minorities of all stripes everywhere -- all on the same team, apparently) and then there are bad guys (White Christian Men, the evil Bourgeoisie), the people who ruin everything for everyone.

[Richard Astley-Clemas]

you friend ought to be subjected to a CD called CHRISTMAS OF LONG AGO.It consists of 78s made in the 1920s by mainly classical singers

[Ivy]

Your link doesn't work. I typed in the address into my browser to get to your file. Here's the link for those who don't want to type it in: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=T0YUK4H5

I agree with you that some Christian music is boring and awful. My roommates used to drive me nuts with Amy Grant records. I admire Christian groups with spirit and vision, like the Christian heavy metal group Stryper.

Thanks very much for posting these songs- they're great, and they make a good change from Hannukah novelty tracks. It's fun to listen to Jewish records in the long tradition of Jewish comedians parodying current hits, like Mickey Katz and Alan Sherman. Not all Jewish religious music is a pleasure to listen to however. My parents had a record called Passover Sedar with Jan Pierce. They used to play it every Passover and we had to sit through it- it was full of tracks of kids droning Dynanu and Pierce's explanations of each song. Oy!

[s.w.]

Re: Con--
Of course, African-Americans are part of the church tradition. But I would suggest that what makes their style of religious song so distinctive is precisely in the way it differs from the white, respectable, Anglo-Saxon mode of prayer. Obviously, no predominantly white church is going to belt it out on the pulpit like Rosetta Tharpe.

Re: Ivy--
Thanks for pointing that out. There should have been individual links anyway, but I don't have FTP access here yet and I assume the management is on holiday.

My intention was not to rile anyone up unnecessarily. T'was a mere bit of friendly roleplaying. I realize that to say, "Oh, I was only joking" is often used as a way to absolve oneself of guilt. All I can say is that I'm new on Beware of the Blog and would like to try various authorial voices as I find my footing here. In general, I hope no one comes to WFMU looking for good, honest, well-reasoned sociology but heavily biased and irrational slants on the world we live in.

[Will S.]

Are the Christian carols, like O Come All Ye Faithful, O Holy Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, etc., really all that sentimental, treacly and cloying, compared to secular ditties like White Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Silver Bells, and Let It Snow? Which ones are you more likely to hear blasted at the mall these days, and which ones will get on your nerves faster? Oh, and by the way, those songs were written by YOUR people. (Who nevertheless, didn't seem to have a bee in their bonnet like you do, and didn't feel excluded or left out by Christmas.) Just so you know.

[anon]

lol what about bach