Persepolis Revisited

Writing about Fatah’s allegations concerning Iran’s involvement in Gaza this morning, I was reminded that today is something of an anniversary. It was five years ago (to the day) that I completed the pre-release work on one of my favorite musical projects of all time.

Serving as the label manager of Asphodel LTD, the electronic music imprint best known for its turntablist records (DJ Spooky, the Invisbl Skratch Piklz, etc,) I’d been given the responsibility for putting together a highly iconoclastic production: An unreleased mix of Greek composer Iannis Xenakis‘ Persepolis, together with an accompanying disc of remixes by noiseniks like Francisco Lopez and Merzbow.

Unlike any of the other records I worked on at Asphodel, this project was absolutely loaded with explicit political signifiers. Originally commissioned by the Shah of Iran to celebrate the 2500th anniversary of modern Iran’s founding by Cyrus the Great, Xenakis’ work was meant to be the defining cultural moment in the Shah’s campaign to secularize the historically devout, Muslim country.

Debuted at the 1971 Shiraz festival amidst the ruins of the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, being reissued a year after September 11th,  this melodramatic, 59 minute composition took on an entirely new meaning. In context, Persepolis‘ noisy, dystopian mood anticipated the Shah’s defeat (and that of Xenakis’ own Communist-tutored vision of secularism) at the hands of Shi’ite revolutionaries seven years later.

Writing the liner notes-cum-press release, and directing the design of the CD’s packaging (together with my employer and memorably-named friend, Naut Humon,) I told the story of the work’s commissioning and its contemporary political significance, juxtaposed against the colorized image of a decaying palace, photographed in Persepolis by British archaeologists in the early 1920s.

For a double CD, the record actually sold quite well. Even more interesting was the fact that Persepolis received an unexpected level of interest from mainstream periodicals in the US and Europe. Needless to say, given the political circumstances of the time, I found it all incredibly encouraging. If you can get your hands on it, the February 2003 issue of UK mag The Wire ran what I still think is the best review copy.

The C in Schalit

Is it SH or SCH? Covering the ongoing case of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit (pictured above) in today’s New York Times, Isabel Kershner drops the C most commonly used in the spelling of his surname. As I kindly responded to a journalist friend who’d interviewed me last April (and had mispelled my last name in the same way in a recently published article), in Hebrew, there is no C in SCHALIT.

The SH sound is made by the letter SHIN. The C is a culturally Ashkenazi (specifically German) addition to the name’s spelling.  A non-standard Hebrew surname ( derived from the word shlita, or ruler,) the C is frequently added to Schalit when it is written in the Latin alphabet. Thus, one may determine from this where the family that uses the name originally came from: central or eastern Europe.

According to my father, the Schalit side of Gilad’s family is from Poland. Though he initially suspected that the name was adopted in Israel, apparently Schalit’s uncle told Elie that the family name precedes immigration. Our family has also called itself Schalit for as long as anyone remembers. Though we originally hail from Italy, records show that our surname has almost always indulged the Ashkenazi C.

I, for one, have always felt plagued by the name. Not because I don’t like it, but because of how often it’s mispronounced by Americans. Frequently prone to enunciating it phonetically, (for example, SHALL-IT instead of SHAH-LEET) the one benefit of its media repetition (unfortunately, due to the Gilad Schalit case) has been that, on CNN and the BBC, reporters have almost always pronounced it the way Israelis do.

So, living in the US, for the first time, when I meet new people, they now tend to say my last name the right way. And, sadly, nearly always ask me if I am indeed related to the missing Israeli soldier. The answer, as I am wont to say, is no, but that our shared surname brings his family’s pain much closer to home. Big up to the Galil Schalits, with the hope that their son will be returned soon.

Freeway of Love

The last of the Israel photographs. Negev tank firing range, as seen from the highway.
 

Meet the Schalits

Every time we go to LA, we always end up at a party. Last weekend was no exception. Barely over my jetlag, we drove down last Friday to celebrate father’s day with Jennifer’s family.

Though I wish I’d been awake enough to snap a shot, the picture above, taken at a family event last year, is a reasonable substitute. The newlyweds, at Jennifer’s brother’s house in Atwater Village.

Goodbye to All That

Yesterday’s announcement that Punk Planet was closing its
doors did not come as a surprise. Still personally close to the
magazine that I helped edit for over seven years (between 1997 and 2004 I
served as the periodical’s associate editor and books editor, in
addition to writing a column), I was entirely clear about PP’s
situation. That does not mean, however, that the news was not
upsetting. Yes, I was intellectually prepared for it. But emotionally,
I was not. I’ve spent the better part of today dragging, going grocery
shopping instead of writing. Coming home from Trader Joe’s an hour ago, I even
missed my exit, and had to drive several extra miles to rectify the error.

Over the course of the last 24 hours, press coverage of Punk Planet’s closure has
been intense. From an  SF Bay Guardian piece (GW Schulz waxing about the
days when Annalee Newitz wrote for us) to the Village Voice (a critical overview of the magazine’s history, by Tom Breihan) the entire alt.press world seems to have gone into
mourning with us. It all very much reminds me of the fact that Punk
Planet was really a writer’s magazine – staffed by serious, young
writers, and admired by left-of-center journalists in
the rest of the U.S. press. As a young editor, that
always meant an enormous amount to me. The
journalistic focus on the magazine was a deep and lasting complement that helped us all get by
under less than ideal economic circumstances.

But that’s only half the story. Punk Planet was a cultural event as
much as it was a magazine. Unlike other similar events associated with
youth culture, it was a product of immense ingenuity and tireless, hard
work too. Thus, when its talented writers started to get offers from
other periodical and book publishers, and record labels saw Punk Planet
as an important place to break artists, the reason was obvious:
Because the work PP was commissioning was insightful, well-written and
passionate. During an era in which every ‘punk’ career move was
considered suspect, imagine what a wrench this threw in the so-called
works. For once, or so we felt, our subculture was being recognized for
non-musical achievements, like political writing, which there was no
point in feeling conflicted about.

Punk Planet allowed us to live ‘punk’ lives without the fear – or the
anxiety – of selling out. Sure, we might end up working for a New Times
periodical, or sell in excess of 60,000 copies of a novel. But in the
grand scheme of things, that’s still chump change compared to the
’sinful’ kinds of music-derived incomes that punks always complained
about. What giving its staff such opportunities entailed was a right to
be equally culturally influential without any of the ideological excess
associated with the so-called culture of careerism. By itself, that is
an absolutely immense achievement, particularly considering how we
defined success. The proof is in the pudding: thirteen years of
successive issues, a first class book imprint, and thousands of
ex-contributors in every wing of publishing.

I could write more about PP, but I’ve done it before, and I think I’ve said enough. If you’d like to read an earlier piece about working at PP, which details a bit more about what I personally think about the magazine, check out Punk Planet Forever in Stylus. Written after the first IPA-induced storm clouds began to gather in late 2005, it does a much better job of saying what I’ve already said above, if not a bit more.

Uncomfortably Numb

It was early in the morning when the news of the suicide bombing in Hadera came in. A lone shahid
had detonated himself in the open air market in town. Four people were
listed as immediate casualties, with the death toll finally topping six
two weeks later. I wondered if my parents could hear it from the confines of their house nearby. I imagined their living room windows shaking, reverbrations from the
explosion piercing the treble-like clang of traffic on the coastal
highway, much like how the sonic boom of a fighter plane
infiltrates the physical structure of everything underneath it with its
overwhelming, sub-bass frequencies.

It was an oddly fitting end to a work trip where politics was somehow always broadcasting itself from  the margins, like the perpetual ambient din of a street lamp at night, or the hum of an office computer that no one ever turns off. Such as when, on our first trip to Jerusalem together, driving along highway six, we saw the separation wall for the first time near Baka al Garbiyeh, and frankly, were not the least bit moved by it. For all of the remarkable injustice and stupidity  that this barrier clearly symbolized to us, we took notice of it, discussed its immorality, and drove on to our destination. 

-Diary fragment, November 2005

Ethnicity as Genre

Ben Gurion airport music shop, Tel Aviv.

Preoccupied Territories

Shoutout to the Border Police

On June 5th 1967, the Six Day War officially began. In less than a week’s time, Israeli forces had wrested control of the Sinai peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Though Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982, and dismantled its settlements in Gaza two years ago, it continues to retain control of the West Bank and the Golan.

Dubbed the "Occupied Territories",  Israeli rule of these lands has had far reaching consequences for both their inhabitants and Israelis alike. On June 5th 2007, though I’d had no plans to formally mark the war’s fourtieth anniversary, I found myself doing the exact opposite of what most Israeli Jews did that day: eating lunch at the home of a Christian Arab friend, in the Israeli town of Nazareth.

The meal began with a parsley salad, followed by a plate of lamb-filled lasagna. In between, the hostess served her own home made kubbeh, followed by a main course consisting of roast beef, baked potatoes and cheese. Desert was doled out in three stages: fresh fruit, followed by a cornmeal-based creme caramel, and finally, a mix of pistachio ice cream and lime sorbet.

Even though we all knew each other fairly well, for some reason, the atmosphere was somewhat tense. Long moments of silence were followed by intense, bilingual bursts of nervous conversation in Hebrew and English. Everything felt forced. In this context, the immense quantities of rich foods served their purpose, bludgeoning all of those in attendance with their heaviness.

It was only after the meal that talk turned to politics. Using Vance’s presence as a pretext to discuss the situation in Iraq, our host expressed enormous frustration with US strategy in the region. Though I had little opportunity to overhear the specifics of his complaints, out of the corner of my eye, I could see our host’s elbows jerking right and left, as he heatedly sought to articulate his concerns.

My attention, however, was focused on our hostess, who’d sat down next to me after serving us dessert. "This is for your wife," she said. Handing me a box of Christian Dior perfume, she told me how beautiful she found Jennifer, and how much she admired her short, bleached hair. "Your wife is very courageous to wear it like that," she said. "Please give her my warmest regards."

Military Psychedelia

The interior barrel of a 105 millimeter cannon, abandoned Magach series tank (M48-M60). Central Golan Heights, June 2007.

Recording the Border

A fence between Israel and Egypt, along highway 12, in the Eilat mountains. Standing nearby, we noticed that the wind was so strong that the razors on the barbed wire made clear, high pitched, percussive sounds.

Carefully placing microphones inside, we captured six minutes directly to disc. Listening back to the results after dinner last night, Vance joked, "Who would have ever thought that barbed wire had musical properties."