Go see Charming Hostess!
Sep. 17th, 2005 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerLast night we went to MIT to hear Charming Hostess, headed by Jewlia Eisenberg, who had just delivered the lecture "Sounds Like Home: Voice, Text, and Diaspora Consciousness in Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girlieland, A Conversation with Composer/Musician Jewlia Eisenberg."
Three large women with even larger voices, belting out the sounds of gospel and Balkan and Andalusian (and vacuum cleaners and other household implements), blended together in Eisenberg's sophisticated and sometimes heartrending compositions - it's not simple music, but it's what I like best in "modern composition": totally roots-based, so you can always follow the thread, even when it's layered and layered with strange harmonies and dissonance (which I kinda like, especially when they derive from older vocal traditions anyway). They act like they're just a buncha chicks belting together onstage, but what's going on is really profound. Like, what other self-described "NERDY-SEXY-COMMIE-GIRLIE" group gets lyrics out of the memoirs of struggling 1920s affair of Walter Benjamin (critic/philosopher of aesthetics, language and history) and Asja Lacis (Bolshevik firebrand and queen of agitprop) in Moscow (on the album Trilectic)??
Their latest album contains a beautiful and devastating sequence based on work by Bosnian poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic. According to their website, "Sarajevo Blues tells of love and resistance, the nature of evil, and laughter by any means necessary. Jewlia's boldly original compositional voice brings the sexy, soulful sound of 60's girl-groups to the 21st century avant-garde, rocking out along the way."
Charming Hostess are singing tonight in Northampton, MA, and Sunday night in NYC at the Bowery Poetry Club. If you can see them live, don't miss it.
Affinities: Sweet Honey in the Rock...Voix Bulgares...Meredith Monk...Urban Bush Women...Voice of the Turtle... any others you can mention?
If you can't see them, listen.
Three large women with even larger voices, belting out the sounds of gospel and Balkan and Andalusian (and vacuum cleaners and other household implements), blended together in Eisenberg's sophisticated and sometimes heartrending compositions - it's not simple music, but it's what I like best in "modern composition": totally roots-based, so you can always follow the thread, even when it's layered and layered with strange harmonies and dissonance (which I kinda like, especially when they derive from older vocal traditions anyway). They act like they're just a buncha chicks belting together onstage, but what's going on is really profound. Like, what other self-described "NERDY-SEXY-COMMIE-GIRLIE" group gets lyrics out of the memoirs of struggling 1920s affair of Walter Benjamin (critic/philosopher of aesthetics, language and history) and Asja Lacis (Bolshevik firebrand and queen of agitprop) in Moscow (on the album Trilectic)??
Their latest album contains a beautiful and devastating sequence based on work by Bosnian poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic. According to their website, "Sarajevo Blues tells of love and resistance, the nature of evil, and laughter by any means necessary. Jewlia's boldly original compositional voice brings the sexy, soulful sound of 60's girl-groups to the 21st century avant-garde, rocking out along the way."
Charming Hostess are singing tonight in Northampton, MA, and Sunday night in NYC at the Bowery Poetry Club. If you can see them live, don't miss it.
Affinities: Sweet Honey in the Rock...Voix Bulgares...Meredith Monk...Urban Bush Women...Voice of the Turtle... any others you can mention?
If you can't see them, listen.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-17 01:36 pm (UTC)I've been meaning to hear them for ages, so I ordered Punch today.
Thanks for nudge!
no subject
Date: 2005-09-17 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-17 02:27 pm (UTC)'A New York native, Eisenberg grew up in a Black and Jewish commune in Brooklyn where many of her caregivers were labor and community organizers. As a young girl, she was a part of what she calls "a musical culture" in which she was expected to "lead songs on picket lines, demonstrations, meetings, to teach and preach... A lot of my preoccupation with diaspora consciousness and multiple voices in dialogue comes from my oddball childhood.'
You do the math.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-17 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-17 04:57 pm (UTC)I have a gazillion things that need writing, so we might not make it out. But I'll float the idea by the dude of the house.
Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 08:50 am (UTC)