Coined in 1992 by composer/saxophonist John Zorn, "Radical
Jewish Culture," or RJC, became the banner under which many artists
in Zorn's circle performed, produced, and circulated their music.
New York's downtown music scene, part of the once-grungy Lower East
Side, has long been the site of cultural innovation. It is within
this environment that Zorn and his circle sought to combine, as a
form of social and cultural critique, the unconventional,
uncategorizable nature of downtown music with sounds that were
recognizably Jewish. Out of this movement arose bands, like Hasidic
New Wave and Hanukkah Bush, whose eclectic styles encompassed
neo-klezmer, hardcore and acid rock, neo-Yiddish cabaret, free
verse, free jazz, and electronica. Though relatively fleeting in
rock history, the "RJC moment" produced a six-year burst of
conversations, writing, and music--including festivals,
international concerts, and nearly two hundred new recordings.
During a decade of research, Tamar Barzel became a frequent visitor
at clubs, post-club hangouts, musicians' dining rooms, coffee
shops, and archives. Her book describes the way RJC forged a new
vision of Jewish identity in the contemporary world, one that
sought to restore the bond between past and present, to interrogate
the limits of racial and gender categories, and to display the
tensions between secularism and observance, traditional values and
contemporary concerns.
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