Currently Browsing: music 9 articles
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, […]
“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 […]
The Flying Camel
In the preface to the new edition of The Flying Camel, Loolwa Khazzoom explains how her book was birthed in 1992, and how to use it in 2022. I began compiling and editing the stories in this anthology back in 1992, shortly after graduating college. I finished editing the first version of the first edition […]
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 […]
Pointless
Loolwa Khazzoom shares the story behind ‘Pointless’ a new song on her band’s debut album, Iraqis in Pajamas (June 4 release). The BackstoryThe world knows little or nothing about indigenous Middle Eastern Jews, like my family, who lived on the land of Iraq for 1300 years before the Arab Muslim conquest of the region. My family lived on […]
What kinda goy has the first name Lenny?
Nathan Abrams reviews a new memoir by musician Lenny Kravitz. ‘I am deeply two-sided’, Lenny Kravitz writes in his memoir, Let Love Rule, which recounts the first quarter-century of his life, from birth until the release of his debut album in 1989. That is because of the two halves of his identity: ‘Black and white, […]
Heavy Metal and Renewal: Rosh Hashanah in the end times
How metal’s Christian apocalyptic sensibility can ground hope for a Jewish new year of renewal.
‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’, My Song for Rosh Hashanah
With Rosh Hashanah coming up this weekend, I am often moved and inspired by our liturgy both ancient and new which speaks to me musically (if not the lyrics which I often find hard to connect with). Standing in shul and hearing the nusach (musical modes) for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur always flicks a […]
The Jam, Jews and JFS: ‘To Be Someone’ by Ian Stone
Nathan Abrams speaks to Jewish comedian Ian Stone about his new book To Be Someone. Ian Stone might not be the first Jewish standup comedian you’d think of, but he’s been around for over twenty years, appearing on television, radio and podcasts. In his newly published memoir, To Be Someone, he recounts his lifelong passions of listening to The Jam […]