Mordechai Shinefield
By Mordechai Shinefield
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The Schmooze Songs in the Key of Supernatural
With the release of Galeet Dardashti’s album “The Naming,” we can officially say we are in the year of the female Jewish voice. Following the exhilarating Mycale project (who opened for Dardashti this week at the intimate Le Poisson Rouge in New York) and Charming Hostess’s new album, Dardashti contributes seven tracks of impressive vocal…
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The Schmooze Are You Listening Now?: Charming Hostess’s ‘The Bowls Project’
There’s something special about enjoying a brilliant album alone, but there’s joy in sharing it with others. Since 2001, when Jewlia Eisenberg released “Trilectic,” I have had the former joy, but not the latter. “Trilectic” was a brilliant concept album that set the writings of Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis to eclectic vocal compositions that…
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The Schmooze The Arty Semite Record Review: Can!!Can’s ‘Monsters & Healers’
Near the end of “Giants,” the opening track of Can!!Can’s debut album “Monsters & Healers,” vocalist Patrick Aleph mutters, “This is never gonna end, this is never gonna end.” The sentiment is more musical than thematic. Like the bands that Can!!Can crib their sound from (denizens of a post-Sonic Youth world where the Yeah Yeah…
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The Schmooze Vampire Weekend Called Out for Being WASPy
When is a Jewish kid from the Upper West Side actually an Ivy League White Anglo-Saxon Protestant? Apparently when the Chicago Reader decides that they don’t like the band Vampire Weekend. Music critic Jessica Hopper called out the band, fronted by the very Jewish Ezra Koenig, last week in an article that accused the band…
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Culture Afropoptastic
In 1985, after wearing out a cassette of the Boyoyo Boys’ song “Gumboots,” Jewish singer/songwriter Paul Simon flew to South Africa to record “Graceland.” Nowadays, magnetic tape may seem antiquated, but 25 years later, American Jewish artists are still drawing heavily on African popular music. Afropop, encompassing genres as varied as the Afrobeat pioneered in…
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The Schmooze I’m Sorry, Is That Mp3 Kosher?
You might check a bag of Skittles to see if it’s kosher, but did you check your latest Bruce Springsteen album? A committee in Israel would like you to. The Jewish news website Matzav reported this week that the Organization of Rabbis for the Purity of Jews released a list of offenses that would deem…
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Culture Ilyas Malayev, Uzbeki Rock Star
In 1992, Bukharian Jewish poet, maqam player and Uzbek rock star Ilyas Malayev immigrated to Queens from Tashkent in Central Asia. When Theodore Levin profiled him for his book, “The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York)” (Indiana University Press, 1997), the forgotten celebrity was sharing a three-room…
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News On the Outside Looking In: New Young Adult Lit
As young adult teen fiction has gotten racier, edgier and more popular — Cecily von Ziegesar’s “Gossip Girl” and Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” are examples of sexy Y.A. series getting film and television treatments — author Matthue Roth has staked out his claim, writing charming novels about Jewish rejects and outsiders. His 2006 book “Never Mind…
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