By Mordechai Shinefield
Mention of heavy metal music may bring to mind satanic rituals, church burnings and members of the 1980s glam-metal band Ratt sporting shoulder-length hair. If Yom Kippur gets a look in, it’s only because you’ve decided to repent for head-banging so hard to Slayer that your yarmulke fell off. Destined to change that, a number of Jewish artists are delving into the dark metal arts and mining 50 years of heavy metal for inspiration in their own work.
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By Mordechai Shinefield
In 2007, at a gig concurrent with the release of her mystical jazz opus “
Mayim Rabim,” I asked Ayelet Rose Gottlieb what she thought about
kol isha. This prohibition against listening to a woman’s voice (generally held by the ultra Orthodox) comes from Shir haShirim, the biblical text that gave “
Mayim Rabim” (“Many Waters”) its lyrics. Gottlieb was understandably nonchalant. “I don’t think much about it,” she said.
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By Mordechai Shinefield
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 Nigeria by Fela Kuti and the Mbaqanga of South Africa, which moved Paul Simon, inspires an array of American Jewish music composed of a multitude of different genres and styles.
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By Mordechai Shinefield
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 apartment with nine people and surviving off welfare.
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By Mordechai Shinefield
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 The Goldbergs” focused on a young Jewish woman, Hava Aaronson, who listened to punk music and rebelled against her religion.
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