Currently Browsing: Music 17 articles
Glory Ride
Julie Carbonara reviews a new musical about cycling champion Gino Bartali. The other day I went to see Glory Ride, a musical about an Italian cycling champion from many years back, Gino Bartali. I had heard of Bartali who was famous for his Giro d’Italia and Tour de France victories before and after WWII, but […]
Who By Fire
Martin Elliot Jaffe recalls Leonard Cohen In The Sinai. “I was afraid at first that my quiet and melancholy songs weren’t the kind that would encourage soldiers at the front—but I learned that these wonderful kids don’t need glorious battle anthems—now between battles they don’t need glorious battle anthems. Now between battles, they’re open to […]
Danny Kalb: Jewish Blues Icon
Martin Elliot Jaffe reflects on his musical inspiration since 1966. Reading the New York Times obituary for guitarist Danny Kalb, who died aged 80 in November, I was transported back in time: aged 15, Framus guitar in hand, struggling to find a chord progression as I listened to Projections, a new album from Kalb’s band, […]
Pop Jews Rocking On
David Drimer explores the relationship between Jews, pop and rock ‘n’ roll. We’re endlessly amused by the essentially semitic game “Who’s the Jew?” In my house, we fervently celebrate the Jewish identity of celebrities, athletes, artists and writers or historical figures famous or obscure, and bitterly lament the transgressions of Jewish bad actors (see Madoff, […]
“A Hard Day’s Night”
David Drimer explores the Jewishness of the famous Beatles movie. One Sunday night in 1964, the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and the world somehow changed. Almost 60 days after the Kennedy assassination, it broke America out of its national malaise. In the midst of the “British Invasion” – a slew of bands […]
A Revolt Against Jewish Body Shaming
Yvette Deane writes about the Iraqi Jewish punk rock band challenging notions of beauty and Jewish power. On the fifth night of Hannukah, Loolwa Khazzoom released her latest single, “I Love My Jew Fro.” Khazzoom and her punk rock band, Iraqis in Pajamas, opened the song with a Hebrew poem, Ya Hasel Yona Mehaka, traditionally […]
The Kosher Beatles
As The Beatles: Get Back streams on Disney+, Nathan Abrams considers the Beatles’ Jewishness. As we know, beetles are not kosher but maybe the Beatles are. Let’s put this in context. Liverpool, where the Beatles hail from, has been a magnet for Jews since the eighteenth century. According to JCR-UK, there have been over 20 […]
Solomon and Rabbi Simon
Barbara Borts tells us how Simon and Garfunkel explain Kohelet. Paul Simon has just celebrated his 80th birthday, keyn eyn hore, and Art Garfunkel has his coming up soon. All the celebrations have sent me with nostalgia back to their music, which formed a significant part of my teenage playlist of folk and singer-songwriter melodies. […]
Shaddai
Mirushe ‘Mira’ Zylali reviews Loolwa Khazzoom’s new album. The Aramaic-language piyyut ‘Yah Ribbon “Alam”’ ends with a prayer for a restored Jerusalem. Written in the late 1500s by Rabbi Israel Najara, the then-rabbi of Gaza, it has been sung for four hundred years as a Shabbat hymn – that’s 21,000 Shabbatot. On Shabbat, God asks […]
Neshama Reggae
Forty years after his death, Martin Elliot Jaffe reflects on Boby Marley’s Jewish Soul. My heart pounds a bit as the stage lights dim and after a long pandemic-enforced hiatus we return to the jam night stage of the Winchester in Lakewood, Ohio. Guitarists await the count, the drummer signals me and I launch the […]