What a Shonde! || From The Red Sea to Echo Park

LIVE||ALERT
The Shondes (w/ We Float)
@ Echo Curio
1519 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles
Sunday, December 16
9pm
Tickets: $5
Info: 213.977.1279

[LISTEN: "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"]

This Catholic Pinay lesbiana (on the Far From Heaven-side of butch) knows what “shonde” means. It’s Yiddish for shame, disgrace, pity or outrage. And I knew this before I peeped the definition thoughtfully provided on the website for queer dramarock sensations, The Shondes. I know what “shonde” means because—interfaith confession time—I fancied myself a spiritual Jewess the minute I saw Yentl on VHS and felt tingly about all the cross-dressing, carts of books and “like buttah” showtune meditations on female education and the Talmud. I was so moved by the sepia-toned, candle-lit, made-for-Barbra-by-Barbra exultations about desire, feminism and faith that the very next day I rushed to the B. Dalton bookstore across from WhereHouse Records at the Riverside Plaza to buy a copy of The Essential Talmud, and the collected works of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

I knew it was deeper than my brief flirtation with the Baha’i faith circa the 7th grade. But I didn’t realize until much later what it all meant: all those grainy, black & white dreams of Brooklyn scored to the pizmonim-inspired harmonies of Fiddler, or those fantasies about being a stranger among them in Cicely, Alaska with Dr. Joel Fleischman on Northern Exposure. For this nerdy, only-child from Southeast Asia coming of age in the white, working-class suburbs of Southern California, Jewishness meant intelligence, humor, showtunes, culture and cute glasses. Not only did Jewishness (or at least the made for TV versions I encountered) compliment my own sense of strangeness and my own sense of ethnicity, but oddly—thanks to my belated, analog encounter with Yentl—it also told me something about my budding queer sexuality. Only two months before I came out as a big homo, my Yentl costume on Halloween was misread as “Shaolin Kung-Fu Master” by all the other college dorkuses around me. A shonde in so many ways. And it’s because of this awkward sense of communion (pardon the Catholicism), and a recommendation from a McSwonderful friend that now, more than 15-years later, I have found The Shondes.

Known for combining “traditional Jewish music” and instrumentation with queercore attitude, punk rock power chords and dramatic sway-if-you-dare melodies, the Brooklyn-based Shondes have amplified that sense of cross-identification and encounter I remembered from oh-so-long ago for a new millennium of queers and others who find themselves misfits in awkward places. In recent years, the band has taken their unique sound and queer activism to venues all across the country—from Louisville, Kentucky to Riverside, CA (back in ’06).

Now on a national tour in support of their soon-to-be-released album, The Red Sea (dropping 1-8-08), The Shondes will be in Southern California on Sunday, December 16, at the Echo Curio Gallery in Echo Park. The band’s resident “Farfoilt Fiddler” (as he’s described on their home page), Elijah Oberman, took a moment to chat with me online from an undisclosed location between San Francisco and Santa Barbara. Here’s what Eli, The Shondes’ resident poet, and an active member of Jews Against the Occupation has to say about Hanukkah, the road, The Red Sea, and what lies ahead…

O!I: Eli, thanks for taking a minute out of your busy touring schedule and the holidays to chat with us. So how was it spending Hanukkah on the road? Did you observe the holidays, or do you approach it all with some sense of ambivalence and fatigue?

E.O.: Well, we traveled with a little menorah, and I think we ended up lighting it more nights than not, which was a victory I think. We actually got to spend a couple nights of it with some radical Jews in Seattle and Olympia, which was quite wonderful. I think playing shows, making music during Hanukkah made it meaningful, and at our Seattle show the local chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace got up and talked about their work a little and had a fun auction to raise some money, which also felt like a good way to connect the holiday to our politics.

O!I: That said, The Shondes are known for being a politically active and activist band. You’ve also been known to get involved in local politics—at least in New York—with organizations like the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. Do you ever get involved or embroiled in some of the regional and local politics you encounter in places further from home, throughout the U.S.? What has your relationship been, generally speaking, to other regions you’ve toured through? (I read your myspace blog about the band's tense encounter with Ron Paul acolytes somewhere in Oregon).

E.O.: Oh, but you make it sound so terrible! To think of us embroiled! Just kidding, but yeah, we do like to connect with people doing political work in New York and also in some of the places we play shows on tour. We like our shows to be meaningful to people and I think that can happen in a lot of different ways- I want people to be moved by our music, to actually feel something and feel like our music gave them something important. And in addition to that, especially when we're on tour, I think that having people who are really rooted in and doing important work in their community use our show (since we're just passing through) to build that community, to connect the feelings music often brings up for people to real work they're doing there, can be a really wonderful connection. [Left: At the Jews Against the Occupation Channukah Benefit--Photo by Shomi, Courtesy of The Shondes]

O!I: Now that we're on the topic of being moved by the music, this is your first full length album, correct? What made you collectively decide it was time to expand the sound to an "LP" format? And what changes did your sound undergo to create a longer musical narrative on The Red Sea?

E.O.: Yeah, this is our first record. We just really felt like it was time. We've been together for about two years now, and we just really wanted to have something that we felt represented us. That we could be proud of. It was so exciting to step back and have to look at our songs as a unit--what kind of an album do these songs make? What is this record about? We chose the title for a couple reasons. We actually have a song on the record that references the story of the parting of the Red Sea, using it as a metaphor for taking really emotional political risks (the story goes that the sea didn't part at first, and it wasn't until one person jumped in and went as far as he could by himself that the sea parted, that they had earned a miracle), and that felt like a pretty good way to talk about how we want to live our lives. But also, it's funny that you used the word narrative because as we started looking at the song titles. it started to feel like we were telling a story. Like they were chapter titles in a story book, or a tale of sorts. So we wanted it to have a big, grand title to go with it and The Red Sea felt like that. (Also there's a lot of red and water imagery in our lyrics). [Above Right: The Red Sea photos by Erica Beckman, Courtesy of The Shondes]

O!I: Other critics have made hay of some of the prophetic tones in your music. How religious--however you might define that--would you really say your music is? On the surface, at least, it seems that the band is invested in the cultural, aesthetic, and one might even say “ethnic” Jewish traditions in your music. But do you consider yourselves participants in any more explicit sense of religious feeling? Or do you see the music as a critique of organized religion?

E.O.: Oy, what a question! For me personally, I think that my drive to make music, art, culture, and struggle for justice in the world, comes from a very deep visceral place, one that comes from a sense of intense connection with and reverence for the earth and people and creatures around me. Why bother fighting what often feels like overwhelming injustices in the world, or strive to make beauty despite that if things don't come from a place of deep love? And living in this way, valuing a strong sense of connection with the power of the life of all these things around me that feels so much bigger than me- I guess you could call that a connection to something divine. I suppose that's religious in a way, though that's a somewhat loaded word for me and so many other people. I'm definitely strongly identified as Jewish culturally, and sometimes go to synagogue so that's part of my personality and how I express myself and those feelings for sure, including through music and the band. But it's really important to me that I think we're making music that a lot of different people will be able to see themselves in, that values and utilizes the three of us who are Jewish in the band's Jewish music and culture without being exclusively Jewish by any stretch of the imagination. That was a simple enough answer, right?

O!I: We wouldn't want it any other way [insert winky emoticon here]. Now that we've tackled "faith," what about your queer constituency? I know you’ve headlined for a range of bands that other music sites have dubbed “grrrrl punk” or “punk girl power” (to quote a page that shall not be named). Do you find the label disconcerting, given that you are a mostly male band? Where do your trans or post-trans politics figure into this? And how do you imagine the relationship you’ve forged musically with bands that have come out of the post-riot grrrrl tradition?

E.O.: Well all of us identify as queer and feminist, and since most of us grew up as female that's a big part of who we are, so I don't feel so uncomfortable with that aspect of it. I think we come out of a moment where feminist and queer also meant a strong commitment to radical politics in general, to fighting racism and classism and calling out privilege in the often largely white and class privileged queer and feminist communities and music scenes we are a part of.
That's something that's still really important to me, and that's an ethic we bring to our music and the shows we play. What I do find disconcerting is the constant pigeonholing of bands with queers or women in them, the way that keeps our and others' music from reaching more people, and continues to say that a "normal" band, a band to be respected and taken seriously, is three or four straight white guys and anything else is "other." [Right: At the Ruined Music Party, May 2007. Photo by Bryan Bruchman]

O!I: Let's just say, true dat! Well, Eli, sadly we’re running out of time, but before we part, I wanted to ask what lies ahead. What are your expectations for the band with this new album in the new year? Any parting words or dedications to close out 07?

E.O.: Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview. I'd just like to say again that I hope people will check out the record (and I'll give a shout out here to our wonderful producer Tony Maimone from Pere Ubu, They Might Be Giants, and most recently Book of Knots who was an enormous part of making this record), and I hope you all love it. That said, I'm so glad it's done because I'm looking forward this year to being able to get back to focusing on writing more new songs (and continuing to play tons of shows of course)!

O!I: We're looking forward to seeing what The Red Sea brings as well! Mazel Tov, and see you in a few days at Echo Curio. - (KT)