Yiddish Punk
Dec. 24th, 2018 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI had a lot of fun at the concert Saturday night. It was organized as part of Yiddish New York, a week long conference/festival of Yiddish culture, most of which I won't be able to go to. The crowd was mostly weird Jews of all sorts.
Natalie.Computer opened. She is an electronic noise musician. Mostly I didn't find the music too interesting, but she concluded the set with a nice spectacle by projecting the code she was using to synthesize her music onto a screen so we could see as she adjusted decay periods and frequency generation expressions and so on.
Then came Koyt far Dayn Fardakht, playing punk versions of Bundist anthems and similar music. It was a lot of fun to dance to, and to feel their joyful fury, though I had mixed feelings about some of their Anti-Zionist music, as a Zionist. Obviously early 20th century Bundist anti-zionism is not the same as contemporary progressive Jewish anti-Zionism; the two seemed to me to mesh a little dissonantly. But I'll tell you what, this is how you do Anti-Zionism in a way that's clearly not anti-semitic. Every single gesture Koyt far Dayn Fardakht made showed their deep love for Jewish culture and history.
But they managed a setlist that in general made brilliant connections between the politics of now and the politics of then. Anti-prison and anti-police protest songs, songs about refugees and exile, songs about workers and struggling against poverty.
Lastly, God is My Co-Pilot was pretty spectacular. Apparently they were kind of a big thing in the indie music scene back in the early '90s, a no-wave/queercore band. I don't think I'd ever listened to their music, but the name sounded familiar. But based on the skimming of stuff on the internet I did before the show, I expected something more musically primitive than what we got, which was a mixture of off-kilter punk guitar with free improvisation and Eastern European folk music. I never thought I'd hear a weirder "Siki Siki Baba" than Beirut's, but GodCo's was much weirder. Much much weirder. Also, Frank London joined them on trumpet, which was... I mean, Frank London! I'm always there for Frank London.
Natalie.Computer opened. She is an electronic noise musician. Mostly I didn't find the music too interesting, but she concluded the set with a nice spectacle by projecting the code she was using to synthesize her music onto a screen so we could see as she adjusted decay periods and frequency generation expressions and so on.
Then came Koyt far Dayn Fardakht, playing punk versions of Bundist anthems and similar music. It was a lot of fun to dance to, and to feel their joyful fury, though I had mixed feelings about some of their Anti-Zionist music, as a Zionist. Obviously early 20th century Bundist anti-zionism is not the same as contemporary progressive Jewish anti-Zionism; the two seemed to me to mesh a little dissonantly. But I'll tell you what, this is how you do Anti-Zionism in a way that's clearly not anti-semitic. Every single gesture Koyt far Dayn Fardakht made showed their deep love for Jewish culture and history.
But they managed a setlist that in general made brilliant connections between the politics of now and the politics of then. Anti-prison and anti-police protest songs, songs about refugees and exile, songs about workers and struggling against poverty.
Lastly, God is My Co-Pilot was pretty spectacular. Apparently they were kind of a big thing in the indie music scene back in the early '90s, a no-wave/queercore band. I don't think I'd ever listened to their music, but the name sounded familiar. But based on the skimming of stuff on the internet I did before the show, I expected something more musically primitive than what we got, which was a mixture of off-kilter punk guitar with free improvisation and Eastern European folk music. I never thought I'd hear a weirder "Siki Siki Baba" than Beirut's, but GodCo's was much weirder. Much much weirder. Also, Frank London joined them on trumpet, which was... I mean, Frank London! I'm always there for Frank London.