Metal Jew

Viz nails transgressive art and critics like me

Viz is definitely a slightly-guilty pleasure for me. God help me I've been reading it since 1986. At it's best it's irreverant, has an uncanny way with everyday speech and is vulgar without being brainless. Still, particularly in recent  years, there's way too much stuff that's simply purile. Issue 191 though contains a strip that's absolutely on target. 'Thoughtful Bully' features a playground bully who justifies himself via the language of edgy, transgressive art. It absolutely nails people like me who make all kinds of excuses for dodgy art. I am duly humbled:

A Metal Experiment in Cameroon

A Dutch artist called Steve Jouwersma contacted me regarding metal in Africa (something I've blogged about here):

I just came back from Cameroon where I did an art residency. When I was there I came up with the idea of organizing a metal concert to see the response of the audience unknown to metal. I found that almost nobody knew much about metal music, even the term METAL had to be put as "metal rock" to understand what i was pointing at.
Talking with musicians I discovered metal never happened in Cameroon at all. In the 60's there was rock and roll but due economic decline and maybe other reasons it never evolved in heavier guitar styles.

I made posters for a metal concert and invented with some local people a band name (Ngos'a Bedimo) wich means "ghosts music"" and put this on 50 black tshirts:

I found musicians willing to try and play it, and I had some distortion pedals with me to use. At the end what is typical for Africa the musicians came way too late for rehearsal or didn't show up at all. In a moment of improvisation I played metal on a right hand guitar ( i'm left handed) with a "makkosa" drummer on Saturday night in a club in Douala. It was fun but not completely what I wanted to do (i wanted an all black, all cameroonian black man metal band)

I saw your essay presentaiton online "Beneath the Remains" where you talk about the underground experience. This is what i was looking for maybe, a fresh audience , strong link to occult, ancestors and witchcraft confronted with metal. "Underground music scene" besides the hiphop cd-r from young kids was very hard to find, "traditional" was easier.

So well a nice experiment for the 3 weeks stay there, I left some cd's and a guitar book how to play metal.

The idea of creating a previously non-existent 'local' popular music genre in this way is an intriguing one. Music scenes tend to emerge either 'organically' through the efforts of people on the ground, or through the efforts of music corporations - this experiment followed neither model. In fact you could argue that this was a kind of 'missionary' attempt to create African metal. The imperialist connotations of this are of course problematic. Nevertheless, as an experiment to think what black African metal might look like is fascinating.

Left Right Night

On Thursday Dec 3 I will be speaking at the JCC for London's Left Right Night. It looks like it'll be a fun night - a novel mix of cabaret and discussion. You can download a flyer here and this is the blurb (typepad wouldn't let me change the font size!!!):

As the Jewish community becomes increasingly polarised along the left/right political axis, the JCC responds with a unique alternative panel discussion and cabaret night. Throwing up debates on observance, Jewish futures, Israel and economics to a panel from the entire political spectrum, this will be Question Time on steroids.

The panel includes activist Joseph Finlay, academic Keith Khan Harris and political comedian Andy Zaltzman, chaired by Tim Samuels.

The second part of the night will be a variety show which gives carte blanche to comedians, live artists and musicians to try their riskiest, most provocative knife-edge material.

The cabaret features comedians David Schneider, Andy Zaltzman and artists Oreet Ashery and Adi Lerer.

Only the open-minded need attend…

Book here.

More on Hanukah Gone Metal

There's a nice piece on Jewcy by Seth Diamond of Gods of Fire, the people responsible for Hanukah Gone Metal in which he explains the history behind and motivation for the project.

Interview with German radio

At the Cologne metal and gender conference a few weeks back I was interviewed for an interesting sounding documentary on music and violence for the German radio station WD3. The documentary was called Appetite for Destruction - Der Sound der Gewalt and you can download a recording I made of it here:

Appetite for Destruction - Der Sound der Gewalt (14_11_2009)

Although I don't speak German, Raphael who interviewed me asked some taxing questions so I'm sure the programme is interesting.

Beneath the Remains: Journey into the Known

On 9 November 2009 - the same day as the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - I presented a lecture and workshop in Berlin. The presentation was part of a project held at the gallery arttransponder called 'Beneath the Remains' .

For my talk I used a neat piece of presentation software called Prezi. I've since updated the presentation to include sections of written text (that I wrote for the exhibition catalogue) to make a kind of audio-visual essay. You can view it here and  I've also embedded in this blog post below:

Metal and conservatism

Gerd Bayer (editor of the collection Heavy Metal Music in Britain) alerted me to an interesting exchange on metal on the unlikely forum of paleoconservative publication Taki's Magazine (Taki being Spectator columnist, playboy and all-round dodgy character Taki Theodoracopulos). Spurred by this sarcy and superficial blog post on Bayer's book, a number of other Takimag contributors have rallied  round the metal flag. Most interesting is this piece by Alex Kurtagic. Kurtagic runs the UK label Supernal Music (home to the wonderful Meads of Asphodel (can't be bothered to put in a link) amongst others). Kurtagic and Supernal have been accused of far right sympathies and some of his acts appear to have NSBM connections, but in truth his views seem to be based on a loathing for modernity as much as any obviously Nazi views. The debate on Taki's Mag seems to have provoked a number of contributors to praise elements of metal, particularly black metal for its potential as a conservative critique of modernity.

There's clearly a long and detailed blog post to be done on the subject. As ever though, I don't have the time to devote to it. Hopefully at some point in the future I will write something more substantial on conservatism and metal.

Do you have to be orthodox to make good Jewish religious music?

I recently got sent a CD called 'Better Get Ready' by a New York-based Jewish punk band called Moshiach Oi. It's down and dirty, fearsomely fast and undeniably hardcore. The band are ultra-orthodox, probably Chabadniks from what I can gather and the lyrics reflect this with lots of talk about Moshiach and mitzvot. The aggression of punk seems to match the fundamentalism of the message.

Then I heard about an Israeli band called Chasidica (there's a feature on them here). Here's their logo:

While the Metallica-logo shtick would appear to suggest yet another Jewish parody band, Chasidica are much more interesting: their left-field alt rock influences combine with their interest in chassidus and kabbalah to produce quite an intriguing brew (although they too are prone to bouts of tiresome Moshiach-ism).

When I think of bands like this, plus other acts like Y Love or Matisyahu, I'm struck by how pretty much the only Jewish acts who sing about spiritual/religious stuff that I like tend to be orthodox - and often ultra-orthodox. The kinds of Jewish music I can't stand tend to be made by Reform Jews - who I am much closer to in practice - like Craig Taubman or Debbie Friedman. Progressive religion doesn't seem to fit well with cutting edge music, at least in the Jewish case. So the most intriguing music tends to be made by either secular or orthodox Jews and the  centre is mostly pretty mushy.

There's another pattern here: the music I seem to enjoy most seems to be made by people whose views I don't share, even abhor. I seem to like the music of fundamentalists like Moshiach Oy or Burzum more than I do the music of people like me. Perhaps because fundamentalists are good at passion?

So nu am I being unfair? Probably...

Transvestite Metalhead Zine

Spurzine from Australia got in touch and sent me a beautiful zine he made called 'Travesty: Musings on Being a Transvestite Metalhead'. He also sent a couple of other mini metal-related zines as well that were equally cool. You can find out more about the man and his zines here and 'Travesty' can be bought here.

My metal-related workshop in Berlin on November 9th

I'm not sure if anyone in Berlin reads this blog, but here's some info on a metal-related workshop I am presenting in Berlin next Monday 9th November 2009 at 5pm. It's part of a really interesting art project called Beneath The Remains taking place at arttransponder:

arttransponder is inviting you to the workshop Journey Into the Known

9th November 2009, 5pm

In this presentation and workshop, Keith Kahn-Harris, author of ‘Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge’ asks: ‘How do we mourn the death of the unknown?’

In the first half Dr Kahn-Harris will put on a multimedia presentation arguing that the history of metal scenes since 1989 are a symptom of a wider process of the ‘unknown becoming known’ whose apotheosis was the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989.

In the second half of the workshop, participants will be asked to try and capture and mourn their first exposure to a subculture, scene or previously secret world. Using art, writing or other creative mediums participants will produce a collective ‘scrapbook’ of poignant and nostalgic moments in the death of the unknown.

The event will take place in English. There is a limited number of places available for this event, so please register at info@arttransponder.net. Alternatively you can call the arttransponder art space office on 49(0)30 – 30642400, Thursday between 12 a.m.- 5 p.m. and Friday / Saturday between 2 p.m.- 7 p.m.

within the framework of the exhibition of BENEATH THE REMAINS - Translations of Estrangement and the Politics of Survival
Exhibition / Lecture / Public Art Projects / Workshop / Experiment in Ambient Hearing
16th October - 14th November 2009

Artists: Eduard Constantin (RO) l Cristina David (RO) l Andreea Faciu (RO/DE) l Vincent Faciu (RO/DE) l Tatjana Fell (DE) l Bogdan Ghiu (RO) l Keith Kahn Harris (GB) l Dumitru Oboroc (MD) l Ondrej Svadlena (CZ) l Tim Wolff (DE)

A project curated by Vlad Morariu l (RO)