DJ SoCalled in Boston - review of a great concert
I have been wanting to write about Josh Dolgin and his music for several months. I've mentioned him in connection with Shtreiml, and I've kvelled over his and Sophie Solomon's "HipHopKhasene". And he's a mensh doing very interesting new music. Then I saw him at a small bar in NYC in February, with a pickup band that included Frank London, Susan Watts, Paul Shapiro, Ron Caswell (or some tuba player doing a Ron Caswell imitation), and Alex Kontorovich. Alicia Jo Rabin and Annette Ezekiel of Golem opened, so there should have been "kol isha" issues, but the crowd consisted of people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, from every walk of life, including hassidim. And it was worth it.
I have been wanting to write about Josh Dolgin and his music for several months. I've mentioned him in connection with Shtreiml, and I've kvelled over his and Sophie Solomon's "HipHopKhasene". And he's a mensh doing very interesting new music. Then I saw him at a small bar in NYC in February, with a pickup band that included Frank London, Susan Watts, Paul Shapiro, Ron Caswell (or some tuba player doing a Ron Caswell imitation), and Alex Kontorovich. Alicia Jo Rabin and Annette Ezekiel of Golem opened, so there should have been "kol isha" issues, but the crowd consisted of people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, from every walk of life, including hassidim. And it was worth it.
What I saw in February had rough edges. It wasn't as gelled as, say, the second time I saw the Klezmatics, on a stage in San Francisco and realized that my sense of what "Jewish music" was had been irretrievably and wonderfully changed. Dolgin, aka "DJ SoCalled" wasn't with a band that had been touring together for several years, but the paradigm shift was no less real, the music no less sweaty and exciting, and "Jewish music" that much changed, again.
So, I have been waiting for him to show up here in Boston for months. He was at a tiny club in Cambridge, the Lizard Lounge, Saturday night, but we missed it. And we almost missed his scholarly appearance at a conference on Jews and Secularism here at Hebrew College—the concert was sold out. Fortunately we, and a few other holdouts were allowed in after the event began to take seats of the few people who didn't show.
Dolgin is a hip hop musician who is also out as a Jew. I think that's a fair designation. He is explicit in not describing himself as a Jewish hip hop musician, but also explicit that the Yiddish music he has been rediscovering, sampling, and transforming is his music—this is what he works with, not someone else's sounds. At tonight's show, which began with a short talk by Mark Slobin about the evolution of Jewish music in America from various stages through a sort of cultural "Americanization" and finally, most recently, to a new phase where American Jews are no longer so much trying to show how American they are, but instead, moving inward and exploring what being Jewish means to them. Then, Dolgin, accompanied by (mostly) out of towners including Eric Stein, from Toronto, on bass; Deborah Strauss on violin; Ron Caswell on tuba—both of Brooklyn; and Michael Winograd (of Boston for four years, now moved back to NYC) on reeds; and Hankus Netsky on piano.
The band rocked. They opened with a Moyshe Oysher "bim bom" that moved into bits of sampling and rap; Winograd and Strauss traded with Dolgin on accordion and samples and vocals. It was like viewing some wonderful Jewish hiphop jam band. From there Dolgin brought out the chant samples that he played on the recent Krakauer Live album, which moved, again, into Yiddish song, then rap, something that involved a wonderful boast about putting the "Jew in Jukebox / Pro in prophylactic".
All during the set, the band bounced between relatively traditional Yiddish, often interrupted by samples, rap, and that lovely incredible instrumental ability provided by Winograd and Strauss. (Caswell and Stein were incredible on the beat and rhythm that held it all together, but I was riveted by Michael and Josh and Deborah and their back and forth on lead.) After an occasionally deconstructed "Hopkele" that also pulled in Hankus (whose Klezmer Conservatory Band recorded a rather remarkable version of the same tune early on) on piano, the band sat down for a song while Dolgin went to the piano and did a wonderful, wonderful Yinglish rendition of an old Lebedeff tune that enabled him to spoof Litvak, Galicianer, and then American Yinglish culture and accents. What was more remarkable was that Dolgin was able to make it all seem current and funny to an audience ranging in age from teens to older folks who came because this was a conference on Judaism and Secularism. Despite a booming bass and deconstruction of Yiddish song as most of us knew it, everyone, regardless of age, remained entranced—not just entranced, but actively participating in the clapping and bim boms as the opportunity arose.
After a Serbian piece, Dolgin returned to one of my favorites, this time done rap style: "Ikh bin a border bei mein wife" (sp?), and then onto another beatbox bim bom bom composition and into "I like She" which Dolgin has recorded with Shtreiml, and with Eric Stein's band, Beyond the Pale, and just performs a lot—which is good, because its a great song when done this well. The concert ended with a rap version of "Balaboste" (Mistress of the house) which he says he learned from Adrienne Cooper at KlezKanada. (Cooper does an amazing version with Mikveh, and solo, but hers is differently great from this one.) Back in February, the version of "Balaboste" was fairly simple. In addition to singing some of the words, he would rap them out. Here, he kicked things up a notch and inserted some wonderful commentary about Jewish self-identity—it reminded me of another Jewish hip hop group, the Hip Hop Hoodíos—but as good as they are, DJ SoCalled has raised the bar on everyone. "I wanna be your oy boy / will you be my goy toy" may not be any more profound than the Hoodios' "Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel", but inserted as the refrain to ongoing commentary—an English language version of the updated badkhones that Michael Alpert does at Brave Old World concerts, here inserted into the breaks of a transformed "Zise baleboste" was a wonderful ending to a short, but very well-received and nicely, soulfully done set.
Afterwards Hankus led a panel discussion on the music with Josh, Deborah, Mark Slobin and himself that talked a lot about how important Yiddish was as a living source of Jewish identity and new Jewish music. Dolgin also mentioned leading a choir in an Orthodox synagogue in Montreal (where he lives) and how much he enjoys human voices harmonizing. The audience seemed amused at the thought of him deigning to be part of the Orthodox world at times, but Deborah Strauss made the point that this wasn't something funny—one of the reasons why this music is so amazing is that Dolgin isn't putting things in boxes. He is drawing from many Jewish sources, as well as from the technology and sounds of hip hop to create his music.
Several people on the panel also talked about how Yiddish was something that they didn't get growing up. Hankus spoke about meeting Molly Picon in 1980 and her telling him that he had to learn Yiddish, so, as he tells it, he signed up for classes the next day. Several comments referred to the way that Hebrew supplanted Yiddish as though Yiddish were no longer relevant, and Deborah reacted strongly to the suggestion that no one is speaking Yiddish today, pointing out that there are classes and institutions and growing numbers of people—even outside the ultraorthodox communities where Yiddish is still the day-to-day language—who are not only learning and speaking Yiddish, but who, like Dolgin, are creating new poetry and music in Yiddish. Strauss and her husband, Jeff Warschauer, certainly fall into that category, as does Hankus, as does Michael Winograd, whose band, Khevre, recorded several new Yiddish poems, put to music by Winograd by the young Sarah Gordon. There was some anger at the way that Hebrew was assumed to be the Jewish language, and also a strong sense that this didn't mean that Hebrew was not important. It's just that we Jews don't speak just one language, and for American Jews, Yiddish is a very important component of who we are and of our history in this country, and of the roots of those who came from Eastern Europe to this country. Mark Slobin made a point that I had never thought about in quite that way, pointing out that after the Holocaust, most American Jews no longer had a homeland—the cultural replenishment that came from the old country was gone.
It was a good talk, and great music, and it was wonderful that it was sold out. Good words and good music deserve to be heard. I was also pleased to hear that Dolgin's concert at the Lizard Lounge had attracted a good crowd.
As a side issue, grassroots organizer and labor songster Si Kahn happened to be there, and I got to meet a songwriter whose music has sustained me through so many good and bad times. His album, "Doing my Job" is such a deep part of me at this point I don't think it could be surgically removed. That's the album where the song about his grandfather's journey from the Tsar's army to Canada, "Crossing Borders" first appeared. It is my favorite song about the North American Jewish experience, one that honors the horrors that that generation left, and the hard work and family values they contributed on this continent. The song caps an amazing album about working people and working, from my favorite song about paranoia "who's watching the man who's watching me" to the haunting, a capella mountain holler "go to work on monday one last time"—maybe, your average Si Kahn album, but the one I know best among so many. Later Kahn echoed what the panelists had said about being "out" about their Judaism and Jewishness, and how that was an important part of what he had to sing to North American Jews—not just to be an activist and organizer—also motivated by his sense of being Jewish—but to do it as who he is.
There is a slew of new Jewish music, newer than the klezmer revival music that informed the name of this website. It ranges from the fascinating punk-lounge Yiddishkeit of Golem to the new klezmer fusion of Khevre or the Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewish music reclaimed by Divahn or the new American-Middle Eastern fusion of Pharaoh's Daugher.
But, for tonight at least, the most exciting of it all is the lack of boundaries in Josh Dolgin's music and the still-uncategorizable, wonderful-to-watch-in-formation fusion that he performs, and I had to get it down, as best I could, while it's all still playing in my head and before life moves on and I find myself lamenting, as I have since February, that it's time I wrote down something about some new music that is so very very worth hearing. It's good to hear it at a polite setting, as tonight at Hebrew College, or best yet, in a small club wherever Dolgin tours to next (according to the KlezCalendar, that would be Chicago on June 22).
the 2nd International Jewish Music festival-seminar in Moscow
DONA-FEST, March 2006
Who knew there was so much of real interest in the world of Jews and rock music? Someone does, because there is a very interesting website,