Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Jews have a long and healthy relationship with the West’s pop culture forms. In particular, there’s a laundry list of famous Jews making great music. And let’s face it: Bob Dylan is a tough act to follow. So how do we one-up ourselves? Frum Jews riffing on pop music: rock, R&B, even rap. Matisyahu is probably most famous…
Rising indie pop artist Chana Rothman seems tailor made for an enthusiastic fandom. With greater numbers of young people embracing the roots of their cultures, music that blends Western sensibilities with world sounds is in greater demand. In the Jewish world, musicians have capitalized on this need for both cultural authenticity and tame worldliness to…
Matisyahu’s Twitter bomb is making the rounds. He shaved. He announced it with a photo and one of the most vaguely expressed personal statements he has ever issued. The argument now is over whether or not he dropped being a Hasid or being religious all together. The tweet is ambiguous – probably deliberately so. The…
During my interview with Kosha Dillz, he mentioned how rappers often portray Jews as “record label executives and lawyers who hoard rappers’ cash.” I decided to do a bit of research, and it turns out that he’s right – pretty much all the references to Jews in hippity-hop are as lawyers or rich kids—in fact, Jewishness…
Crossposted from hipsterjew.com Maybe hip hop has just moved on from the Beastie Boys. I don’t want to be the one to say it, but listening to Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is, while not painful, not something I’d do more than twice. All the problems of the album you can hear on track 3,…
When I’m in a cypher, I don’t have time to plan my rhyme, I don’t even want to use that part of the brain. I start thinking about your rhyme scheme, or even consciously formulate a rhyme and I lose the beat– and the beat is everything. A rapper who establishes a rhythm with their…
On stage, Yemen Blues have a manic energy. On the left side of the stage, Hilla Epstein and Galia Hai play cello and viola, adding stability to a cacophonous sound. On the right side, the horn section of Avi Lebovich, Itamar Borochov and Hadar Noiberg add funk-styled horn blasts and occasional backup vocals. In the…
Yasmin Levy‘s band sounded, in a word, warm. Melodic double bass, percussive Spanish guitar, wavering, klezmer-like clarinet, and laid back latin percussion. It was a thick, mid-range heavy sound, gently syncopated on slow songs, and pulsing quickly for the high energy numbers. It filled up the Somerville Theater Wednesday night. But all of it was…
If you’re reading this blog, I’m guessing you’re not down with Glenn Beck, but did you know that Pinkface Half-wit is a notorious anti-semite? Beck has a long history of appropiating the holocaust for political games, has called George Soros a “puppet master”, and has dressed up as a fetishized Nazi officer for his book…
Rapper Drake is a melting pot of cultures. He is African-American, Canadian, and Jewish, a wonderful cultural package all rolled into one. When asked by a reporter if he was a better Jew than Harvey Levin, who runs gossip website TMZ, Drake replied, “I don’t know. I’m one of the best Jews ever to do…
I was invited to live-blog the event in addition to offering some thoughts afterwards, and while it was tempting for someone of my generation to withdraw from the experience that I was a part of and dispassionately describe it for those who could not be there, I felt like it was a really great opportunity…
“Come on, rude boy, boy, can you get it up?†asks Barbados-born singer Rihanna on her latest single, the aptly-titled “Rude Boy.†The raunchy hit song will likely be in her set list for her May 30 concert at Bloomfield Stadium in Jaffa. Reports say that it has taken “months of negotiations†to get the…
Anyone who knows me is aware of the fact that I love hip-hop. Old-school, new-school, white, black, Filipino, Canadian—it’s all good to me. R&B chimes in with its sultry melodies and catchy hooks to complement the harder sound of rap, creating a musical dynamic with soft and street edges. Even though rap is a game…
“I know it’s bizarre for a young Jewish girl from Connecticut to be so inclined…†That began my application for an internship at an independent New York City hip-hop record label. Most people would consider it a bit out of the ordinary for a white, suburban Jewish girl to be fascinated by the urban music…
The Death of the Jewish Cultural Vanguard
I was about to write a blog post about a giant Israeli cucumber, but then I decided to check my email. And what happens? First I see a JTA piece by Ben Harris about Jewish Hipsters, then I read a Tablet article by Wesley Yang about how Jews invented Rock n’ Roll. Yang’s argument channels…