Kristallnacht (album)

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Crystal Night
Studio album by John Zorn

Publication
(s)

1993

admission

9/10 November 1992

Label (s) Eva Records ; Tzadik (re-release)

Format (s)

CD

Genre (s)

Jazz , Klezmer

Title (number)

7th

running time

42:44

occupation #Occupation

production

John anger

Kristallnacht is a concept album by the American musician and composer John Zorn . It addresses the Reichskristallnacht as well as, in a broader sense, the fate of Jews before, during and after the Second World War , and is considered the starting point of the Radical Jewish Culture movement.

History of origin

Kristallnacht is often interpreted as the beginning of Zorn's search for his Jewish roots, which is confirmed by corresponding statements by the musician:

"It's tied together with passion and research. Every Jew has to come to grips with the Holocaust in some kind of way and that was my statement, that's how I did it. I do not need to do it again (...) it meant a lot to me. It was like a whole lifetime of denying my Jewish heritage coming out in one piece. "

- John Zorn for BBC Radio Jazz File (July 2000)

In the time before the album was made, Zorn worked intensively with musicians from the thrash metal and speed metal scene, in which anti-Semitism was considered widespread at the time. This experience made him aware of the importance of his own Jewish roots. Other experiences that Zorn says contributed to this development were the feeling of being different in his temporary adopted home, Japan, as well as the finding that many of the musicians he had previously played with were Jews. Furthermore, Zorn often mentions Steve Reich as an important source of inspiration, who at the time himself had processed his own Jewish roots musically. Kristallnacht shows parallels to Reich's Different Trains .

The compositions on the album were premiered in 1992 at the Munich Art Project Festival, accompanied by the publication of the manifesto of Radical Jewish Culture . The album itself was recorded on the 54th anniversary of the Crystal Night in New York .

Kristallnacht was released in 1993 on the Japanese label Eva Records ; In 1995 a re-release on Zorn's own label Tzadik followed . The album marked the beginning of a series of Zorn's works inspired by the Jewish musical tradition, most of which will be released under the name Masada . At the same time, the re-release on Tzadik was one of the first albums in the label's Radical Jewish Culture series.

It was Zorn's first collaboration with Mark Feldman , David Krakauer and Frank London , who had previously been known for their work on the border between klezmer and (free) jazz .

Style and subject

The first song, Shtetl , is a typical klezmer melody into which excerpts from speeches and speeches by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi officials are built. The following, 11 minutes long, hard to bear Never Again reflects the horrors of the Reichskristallnacht and the Holocaust in general. The CD includes a warning:

"Caution:" Never Again "contains high frequency extremes at the limits of human hearing & beyond, which may cause nausea, headache & ringing in the ears. Prolonged or repeated listening is not advisable as it may result in temporary or permanent ear damage. "

The silent gahelet follows , in which only soft noises can be heard from the background. The other four songs are less clearly interpretable, but still stylistically varied, from the intense and loud Barzel to the sometimes calm and melancholy Tzfia and Gariin .

The album tells not only about the events of the Reichskristallnacht, but also about the recent history of Judaism in general:

“The seven Movements tell the story of the Jewish experience, of survival and the Holocaust, of the formation of a Jewish state, of the Jewish diaspora and the attraction or refusal to assimilate, and of the fundamental problems of fanatical religious fundamentalism. The piece ends in the present, in New York. "

Artwork

The cover of the album is decorated with a large Jewish star on a background made of broken glass. The booklet includes, among other things, a photo of a starving Jew. Anger was therefore accused of dealing with the Holocaust in a superficial and shocking manner. Nonetheless, this kind of provocative cover design was already typical of previous Zorn releases, especially Naked City and Painkiller .

reception

The album received 4.5 out of 5 stars from Allmusic ; the reviewer emphasized the powerful processing of historical events as well as the high musical quality due to the participation of very good musicians. In an article in the New York Times , Adam Shatz tossed Kristallnacht and other Jewish-inspired works by Zorn's emphasis on "Jewish sacrifice." In a review by Consequences of Sound, the author described Kristallnacht as "one of his greatest accomplishments, a perfect fusion of art and history, emotion and memory".

Track list

  1. Shtetl (Ghetto Life) (5:51)
  2. Never Again (11:41)
  3. Gahelet (Embers) (3:25)
  4. Tikkun (Rectification) (3:02)
  5. Tzfia (Looking Ahead) (8:46)
  6. Barzel (Iron Fist) (2:01)
  7. Gariin (Nucleus - The New Settlement) (7:58)

occupation

Guest appearances

literature

  • Tamar Barzel: New York Noise: Radical Jewish Music and the Downtown Scene . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis 2015, ISBN 978-0-253-01557-0 .
  • Michael Scott Cuthbert: Free Improvisation: John Zorn and the Construction of Jewish Identity through Music . In: Kay Kaufman Shelemay (Ed.): Studies in Jewish Musical Traditions: Insights from the Harvard Collection of Judaica Sound Recordings . Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, S. 1–31 ( PDF; 2.9 MB ).
  • Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Günther Huesmann: The Jazz Book: From New Orleans to the 21st Century . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-15964-2 .
  • Wolf Kampmann: Anger, John . In: Reclams Jazzlexikon . Reclam, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-15-010731-7 , pp. 579-580 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berendt, Huesmann, p. 239.
  2. ^ Cuthbert, p. 1.
  3. ^ Cuthbert, p. 4.
  4. ↑ Cuthbert, p. 10.
  5. ^ Cuthbert, p. 11.
  6. ↑ Berendt, Huesmann, p. 238.
  7. ^ Cuthbert, p. 5.
  8. ↑ Berendt, Huesmann, p. 239; Translation of the advertising text on the Tzadik homepage.
  9. ^ Cuthbert, p. 8.
  10. ↑ Joslyn Layne: Kristallnacht - John Zorn. Allmusic, accessed on April 13, 2017 .
  11. ^ Adam Shatz: Crossing Music's Borders in Search for Identity: Downtown, a Reach for Ethnicity. New York Times , October 3, 1999, accessed April 15, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Adam Kivel: Rock History 101: John Zorn's Kristallnacht. Consequence of Sound, July 5, 2009, accessed April 15, 2017 .