In last issue we got an introduction to Marc Ribot, punk guitarist and professional ass kicker. He talked about his life growing up in suburban New Jersey and the beginnings of the Radical Jewish Culture Movement on the Lower East Side of New York City.
We pick up the second part of the interview with a discussion of the 1992 Radical New Jewish Culture Festival in Munich Germany which featured many of the most prominent artists from the downtown New York scene, including Lou Reed, Shelley Hirsch, The New Klezmer Trio, David Weinstein, Anthony Coleman, Marc Ribot, Tim Burn, John Lurie and John Zorn. The festival was significant not only as a celebration of New York's Jewish culture, but also as an affirmation of Jewish identity in Munich, a city which served as both the birthplace of contemporary Radical Jewish Culture, and the birthplace of Nazism. Ribot talked about the art that was inspired by this festival, how Radical Jewish Culture has changed over the years, and the problems that this movement has had in carving out its own identity.
Aram Rubenstein Gillis: Talk a bit about your involvement with the first Radical Jewish Culture festival in Munich Marc Ribot: I supported the Munich festival and I thought it was a fantastic organizing success. It was a beautiful moment, because you could feel the performers who came were very excited. It felt liberating to perform in a Jewish context. And also what was great about it was people had not had time to learn these ossified Jewish responses, they hadn't learned how to act Jewish and so it was liberating in that sense too. These performances that were being called "Jewish" were basically just us doing our Downtown thing. I didn't want to call it the "Radical New Jewish Music Festival"- I wanted to call it the "Loud and Pushy Festival." Because I didn't understand what "Radical" meant in this context, I didn't understand what "New" meant; is it really new, is it really Jewish music? This I didn't know. But I did know that it was funny that all these friends of mine who were Jewish were also playing loud and pushy music. You know like, wow, there must be some connection. So I supported that. But I didn't support its institutionalization. I supported doing festivals here in New York after that. But John Zorn talked about and then didn't do, and (Knitting Factory Promoter) Michael Dorf talked about and then did a tour of Europe and I did not participate and I dissed it. The festival was being promoted with iconography borrowed from the Holocaust, barbed wire and all this shit. As someone quite rightly pointed out when they toured over there, "But you guys grew up in America watching Romper Room!" You know what I mean. I mean get real. I think there's a difference between using symbols of Jewish culture and using Holocaust stuff as symbol for people who were not close to it.
ARG: Can you talk a bit about what its like to be a Jewish performer in Europe, many of the other musicians have talked about feeling exoticized or fetishized, particularly in Germany. MR: Oh its really cool actually, I've gotten laid a lot. You know to be an "Other" when you don't have to really. I mean it was a bit of a bummer for my grandparents generation, they all died. But to be able to go over there and have German girls really think that your dick is bigger because you're Jewish, its fantastic. But you don't want to be there when the ball swings the other way, so to speak.
ARG: How has the music changed since the original festival in Germany? MR: Now people are lying basically because they're pretending they have some connection to Klezmer when they don't. The only possible way to explain a connection to Klezmer among people who didn't hear it growing up is the idea that I'm somehow genetically linked to that music, which to me is a Fascist concept. Because if I'm linked to that music that I don't know, maybe Aryans are linked to Greco Roman ideals of democracy. Maybe I shouldn't be allowed to vote. And I'll take the voting and you can keep the Klezmer. I think that my musical heritage‹what I inherit‹is to be known through the feelings that I've inherited. And I've never heard a Klezmer tune that kicks my ass like a Wilson Pickett tune or a James Brown tune. My deep attractions have been over the course of my life have been to black music, different forms of black music. And that's the way it is. I don't see that as a betrayal of my Judaism by the way.
ARG: Do you think it¹s an expression of it? MR: Yes I do. Frankly I do. Not by the "Oh I'm so empathetic." I think that there's a lot of reasons. Because I'm not just talking about me, this is a mass phenomenon. .... People can play Klezmer till they're blue in the face, but I know that before Zorn ever thought about Klezmer he was doing the music of Ornette Coleman, he has a deep feeling for it, deep understanding and empathy with it. I mean John's influences are deep. But almost everybody else I know, Roy Nathanson was like really deeply involved in Jazz. The whole scene would have not existed without Thelonious Monk and The Art Ensemble of Chicago. These are a major influence on all of us.
ARG: Why do you think there is a particular attraction to black music? MR: I tried to research this stuff; the interface between Jewish and Black music forms. There was an article in the Village Voice by Alicia Eckls that asked "Is it theft or love?".... I'm pretty sure that what it is in the case of some Jews who have been involved in languages not of their own ethnic background is a case of translation....I think that translation has special meaning for Jews. The idea of grammar. For people who think that reality came out of a book, that the universe came out of a book, translation has a special meaning. The idea of taking something that was meaningful in on place and making it meaningful in another context. Walter Benjamin has written about it in "The Art of the Translator." It has been a sort of a Jewish obsession. I don't think it quite means the same thing when I do a Howling Wolf tune as when Howling Wolf did it. And I think that that subtle change in meaning, while the language remains the same is a deep structure of Jewish thought, it's an examination of language. I think the examination of language, music which deals with the interrogation of language, I don't know if its "Jewish Music" in the sense of deriving from a previous genre, but I think its music with meaning for Jews. That's the interface that I see.
ARG: Do you feel like you can define or describe what is Jewish about you music? MR: I don't know. I listen to too many different kinds of music. The connections that I would draw are more analytical, after the fact when I look at what was done. And then I see certain patterns emerge... I think, the radical desire to do away with bullshit has roots in Jewish idol destruction, the destruction of idols. But I don't think of a line from scripture when I tell somebody they're full of shit. Not usually. So its analytical and its after the fact. What I just wish people would do is have a little bit of faith... Why do [the artists involved in Radical Jewish Culture] have difficulty constructing themselves as authentically Jewish? In other words if its in their own desires, their own history, why they have to legitimate it? Either, if they wanna act Jewish, they have to take like an legitimizing icon, pre war, holocaust imagery or the Klezmer. Why, When they're on 2nd avenue? This is like, this place was Jewish when Tel Aviv was not built. And I don't just mean that there were Jews living here. I mean when there wasn't pop stand in Tel Aviv, there were Jews writing plays in Yiddish, writing articles, having newspapers, sitting in cafes, making records, you know I mean the whole gamut. Pre-war Warsaw, or where Singer wrote, it's gone it¹s dead, and this is the closest thing to it that you're ever gonna experience. And yet it can't produce its own legitimating iconography. It has to borrow its iconography. That's deep. That sucks.
ARG: How can a new iconography be built? Anthony Coleman (of the band the SELFHATERS) talked about this issue a bit and how he feels that all he can build on is absence... MR: Yeah. The feeling of poverty and of absence. You know you can only build something real with what's real. And I'm with Anthony. I believe that the Temple is destroyed and that the oral tradition is destroyed, but that we can rebuild from desire. And we can rebuild theology. I don't know maybe even God is destroyed. But the absence of the temple and the absence of the tradition, and the absence of God are not destroyed. And they're all things that are within me.... In other words, I don't know, you should worry about doing the right thing and stop worrying about acting Jewish and when they stop worrying about acting Jewish then they can start thinking about enacting those parts of themselves, those parts of their emotional make up and those parts of their musical makeup, which maybe on a deep level influenced by this and maybe at that point the texts will resonate. People will want the texts that will feed their desire, this part of their desire. Beyond that what's dead is dead. That's what I think... That's my belief about the peculiar blindness and the difficulty in generating new structures and new icons- in other words in seeing what's in front of our faces as being valid. But the way that this stuff moves forward is by a series of long sleeps, abrupt awakenings and bitter disappointments.
Aram Rubenstein Gillis graduated from Vassar College in 1997.