A few summers ago, I and some friends were browsing YouTube for music to listen to. One of my friends came up with the brilliant idea of searching for “Yiddish Metal.” Without even hearing the music, the name of genre alone suggests something highly out of the ordinary – which the video I will discuss delivers upon in droves. Apparently, the genre of Yiddish Metal is not a highly competitive one, as only one band – Gevolt is actually involved in it.
For this Blog, I will be looking at the official lyrics video for Gevolt’s Kokhotshet (I highly recommend watching the whole thing – it’s quite a unique experience):
In this video, and in many of their other works, Gevolt creates a unique flavor by combining traditional Klezmer melodies and instruments with the sounds of modern metal music. What makes this video stand out to me it the way in which the lyrics are presented (and the random butterflies). Note how throughout the video, the font and styling of the text changes – which may or may not relate to the meaning of the text. However, as I am not a speaker of Yiddish, I cannot know for certain.
Note as well that there appears to be some general plot-line to the images presented along with the texts – from the introductory fields (and butterflies):
To the rush of crowds in the city (still butterflies):
And finally, to what appears to be an alien invasion (no butterflies):
While again, I do not speak Yiddish, and my attempts to translate the lyrics using Google Translate yielded mostly gibberish (predictable), I did gather the feeling that none of these images related to the text in any meaningful way!
So, the already rather surreal blending of klezmer and metal is only amplified by the weirdness of the accompanying imagery. The combination of trombone glissandi and sudden synthesized beeps, or klezmer violin with amplified electric guitar is definitely not a combination that is often heard anywhere else, which is a shame. This mixture of styles and forms creates a genre which is yet to be explored to its fullest potential. When there is only one ensemble creating a musical style, it is hard for that style to expand and grow at rates that other genres are. I assume that the reason that Yiddish Metal has not been expanded to a larger audience is that the initial audience is small, as there are not many Yiddish speakers in Israel (Gevolt’s home country). Though, in a positive turn of events, Gevolt did perform in the MIDI music festival in china a few years back. [check out their live vids on YouTube – they are quite bizarre]
Upon turning to the comment section in search of a few laughs (after all, it is YouTube) and maybe some further insight into this video, I instantly found that as expected, most comments were fairly useless. About half the comments were either comparing the band to Rammstein or trying to comprehend Yiddish (an infrequently spoken language these days). Then, there were some others which held no interest either. Of the comments which I found interesting, the first one, from a “Noam Perlman” matched somewhat my initial reaction upon listening to Gevolt the first time:
Though, without quite as colorful language 🙂
My eventual feelings about Gevolt are now most matched by “Bubba Chunk,” who remarks:
However, in terms of actual analysis, I found most useful the thoughts of “Matthew Simpson”, who writes:
“Matthew” is probably correct in associating Gevolt to what he terms the “Yiddish Renaissance.” While I would not call it just that, it is indeed true that Yiddish as a spoken language is beginning to make somewhat of a comeback. It is then not so surprising that it would return to the realm of music as well.
Sources:
https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2017/02/pr-ven
http://www.gevolt.com/
https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Gevolt/Khokhotshet
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.813370
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/When-Zionism-feared-Yiddish-351939