Thursday, January 10, 2008

see below my paen in Jewish Week to the most stimualting Russian rock group that has come along in quite awhile. Well OK, I dont hear all that many Russian rock groups, but Drozdy has got it going in terms of threnchant Dylanesque lyrics, originality and biting wit. Check out the article by clicking "continued"


by Walter Ruby
Special To The Jewish Week

Call it dialectical rock — a new musical form with roots in the psyche of the Soviet past that gives voice to all the contradictions of the present-day Russian Jewish immigrant experience.
Drozdy (Blackbirds), a musical group formed six months ago by five close friends in their early 50’s — most of whom have been part of the tight-knit Russian literary, artistic and counter-cultural scene since arriving here 30 years ago — have been winning raves since they cut their self-titled CD last month (many of the songs are available on YouTube).
On Dec. 27, Drozdy gave a rousing maiden performance before a packed house of Russian intellectual types and a few American-born admirers at the Bowery Poetry Club in the East Village.


A million miles in sensibility both from the “light as air and half as profound” Abba-like pop that dominates the musical scene in Moscow these days and the schmaltzy variant of the same performed nightly in the music halls and restaurants of Brighton Beach, the music of Drozdy is dense, multi-textured and laced with irony.
After the lead singer and writer of most of the group’s lyrics, Vadim Moldovan, introduced the group in English by saying that a Drozdy concert “is not about songs, but about drama,” the group performed a set of 11 songs in Russian. (“Our entire repertoire at this point,” Moldovan acknowledged.) Behind the stage was a movie screen showing Soviet-era films with scenes of bedraggled proletarians being persecuted by brutish exploiters and of Peter the Great leading his armies into battle.
The music was replete with obscure literary allusions that evinced a deep immersion in Russian history and culture. Several songs express the musicians’ nostalgia for their youth in long-ago and far-away Soviet times. One rhapsodizes about hanging out on Lenin Street as “my little piece of happiness.” Another contrasts the heroism of the World War II generation with the humdrum present upon the assertion that it is better to “Die as a heroic tankist [tank commander] than as a sorry [computer] programist.” Yet another stirring balled, “Burning Down the Homeland,” appeared to extol a distinct Russian-American identity:
“Our ancestral home is on fire ... while over here we are stuck in a four-hour traffic jam. ... But America at least is not Sodom. And I swear that I will never set foot again in my ancestral home because I don’t want any more contact with evil. ... Even if my fate is to sail children’s boats in puddles and even if I have to eat macaroni for dinner. ... Here I am free and proud.”
After the show, audience members said that the music of Drozdy transmits a vitality and genuineness they haven’t heard in Russian music in a long time.
Inga Kotlovskaya, 43, a marketing professional who moved to the U.S. from Kiev at the age of 12, said she finds the music of Drozdy “quirky and intellectually exciting” adding, “The song lyrics are so good that they can stand alone as poetry even without the music.” Kotlovskaya said that even though Drozdy performs in Russian and its songs contain specific references that only someone who grew up in the Soviet Union would “get,” nevertheless she finds their music “less parochial than most American rock I listen to. Drozdy has a different take on reality; one that opens you up to a broader vision.”
Yulia Belomlinskaya, 48, a poet and writer who splits her time between New York and St. Petersburg, said, “Vadim [Moldovan] has accomplished something with Drozdy that is immediately understandable to our parents, our own generation and our kids. I hope this music will inspire young people to cherish their Russian identity and investigate the culture we left behind. Russian Jewish immigrants in America have no roots. We are walking trees.”
Moldovan, 50, is a professor of social work at York College who lives with his wife Vassa, a classical musician, and their two daughters in a two-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights crammed with Moldovan’s distinctive sculptures and bric-a-brac from the family’s travels. He noted proudly that Drozdy’s songs have received 2,500 hits in the two weeks they have been up on YouTube.
“The word ‘wildfire’ comes to mind,” he said with an ironic smile, adding that he doesn’t actually expect Drozdy to become an overnight commercial success and that he and the other members are keeping their day jobs, at least for now. Yet why did the members of Drozdy, who have known each other for more than 20 years, wait until they were 50 to form a rock band?
Moldovan replied, “Look, this isn’t a middle-aged cry for attention. All of us were raised on Soviet music and symbolism, but then we came to New York between the ages of 17 and 20 and it took quite a while to put all of that together and to acquire sufficient wisdom and understanding to make this artistic statement, which wrestles with the contradictions of Soviet reality, post-Soviet reality and America.”
Moldovan said that while there are no specifically Jewish references in Drozdy songs, the group’s sensibility is profoundly Jewish. “Look at Bob Dylan,” Molodovan said. “His Jewish background screams at you, but he writes cowboy ballads. In the same way, we go deeply into Russian music. I believe that the strongest Jewish quality is being able to synthesize, to take a piece of another culture and transform it. That is what Jewish artists have always done, whether in Russia, America, and many other countries.”
Moldovan clearly has a practical side. He managed to convince his cousin, Russian-American billionaire oligarch Len Blavatnik to cover the cost of the production of the group’s first CD. “We consider ourselves the Blavatnik house band,” Moldovan said, without the usually evident tongue in cheek. “Len doesn’t quite get our music, as his own taste is toward gypsy and Romanian music, but we are grateful that he put up the money and let us produce the music we wanted.”
Asked about specific songs, Moldovan said emphatically that “Burning Down the Homeland” is not meant as a condemnation of modern-day Russia, and that another song about the Soviet era with the refrain “Good night children...smoke more marijuana” is not an endorsement of drug use, but rather, in an ironic twist on Karl Marx’s condemnation of religion as ‘the opiate of the masses,’ a description of the narcotic effect of revolutionary ardor on the masses at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution.
“The main thing about our music is that we never preach or moralize,” Moldovan said. “Rather our message is ironic and subversive. This is post-modernist, post-moralist, deconstructionist music. We take pieces of the old Soviet world and of our modern life in New York and rearrange them. We draw together cultural pieces that would never be connectable in any other way.”
Naum Khromov, a Drozdy guitarist who works as a computer programmer to make a living, said the group’s music “is a surrealistic mix of our good and bad dreams. We have come to a certain point in our lives when we all have wives, kids, mortgages, so we try to jump out of that reality into the kind of therapeutic effect one gets from creative expression. It’s a wonderful form of intellectual and emotional release.”
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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Hillary's comeback

Well, we have just witnessed an incredible, stunning revival for Hillary Clinton in the face of ten polls and just about every commentator around who had already written her off as dead. I am personally happy about the result, even though my last posting on the forum was an awed response to Barracks’ powerful speech after he won Iowa. In the days before New Hampshire, though, I found myself moving back toward Hillary for several reasons:

1. I didn’t feel the race should be over if Obama won in two small and unrepresentative states. The race should, and now will certainly, continue at least through Super Tuesday February 5 which will give us a chance to thoroughly vet Hillary and Barrack and make an informed decision as to who is the best change agent and has the best chance to defeat the GOP’s candidate. As much as I remain impressed by Obama, he needs to put more meat on the bones of his “change” message. What are his priorities and is he willing to go toe to toe with the insurance, oil and pharmaceutical companies and with the Republican right to get health care and a sane energy policy that really fights global warming/ All this stuff about uniting the whole body politic and no red states and blue states is lovely, but only goes so far. And Hillary needs to prove to me that she is not too much of a centrist and a militarist, but will instead resist the impulse to go to war with Iran, will find a way to withdraw from Iraq and will follow policies that isolate Islamic fundamentalism, not fan its flames as Bush-Cheney have done.

2. I disliked the media’s nasty treatment of Hillary during the lead up to New Hampshire, as well as the ‘ganging up’ on her manifested by Edwards and Obama during the New Hampshire debate. Edwards, in particular, behaved in a slimy way with his servile kissing up to Obama and deriding Hillary as the status quo. Bullshit. She was right on target to get angry and make clear that she has been fighting for progressive change in this country with 1969—has dedicated her whole life to it. Any chance that I would back Edwards went by the board at that moment. I also didn’t like Obama’s sardonic “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” And then the media going crazy when she teared up the following day—the sheer meanness of the NY Post and jerks like Dick Morris. Yes, I am sure all of that won her great sympathy, including my own.

3. Both Hillary and Barrack will need to draw distinctions with each other, but the one who goes too negative will lost my vote for sure. They need to argue over the next month about who would be a better Democratic candidate in a way that doesn’t pull the party apart; does not, for example, pit women against blacks—for that way will lead to certain destruction and likely throw the election to the Republicans. These are both fine candidates and decent human beings and good leaders, so please, Hillary and Barrack, give it your best shot, but do things in such a way that the winner of the primaries over the next month will then be able to move forward and take us to victory. And leave open the option of a Hillary-Barrack or Barrack-Hillary presidential/vice presidential ticket; since that would likely be our ticket for victory.

I’ll write on the Republicans and the Jewish angle in all of this in my next posting…

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Thursday, January 03, 2008

Obama

Wow. I must admit I had not been aboard the Obama bandwagon, that I was torn between him, Hillary and Edwards and unable to decide which to vote for if there is still a contest in NJ February 5, but still more sympathetic to Hillary--until I heard Obama's Iowa victory speech last night. Now I 'get' Obama; that he is the most inspirational politician to come along since Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the one who may finally slay the rightist demon which has dominated our body politic since that fateful year 1968--40 years ago. Hillary's speech was fine and earnest--she really cares about change and social justice and has devoted her life to it, but there is simply no comparison between her homely, prosaic, incrementalist language and Obama's ability to soar rhetorically; to give voice to the long stymied, almost forgotten hopes for a humane America based on cooperation not competition; a country that will finally provide its people with decent health care, a sane energy policy that seriously tries to deal with global warming and that treats the rest of the world with respect. Amazing...I honestly think the race on the Democratic side is all but over and Hillary and Edwards will drop out before February 5--that Barrack will treat them with the honor they deserve and give them places at the table and that we will get down to the business of finally bringing to fruition the politics of hope. What an amazing thing to be contemplating a black president to heal America's 400 year legacy of racism. God protect Barrack and keep him safe and let us strive to recreate the energy and hope that seemed dead for so long. What a night...

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