“history sounds different if you know where to listen”
From the kitschy mind of Roger Bennett who brought you Bar Mitzvah Disco and Josh Kun, author of Audiotopia comes the latest Jew-pop project Hippocampus.
Continuing the expansion of the Jewish cultural narrative, this project is tackling the world of Jewish music.
As Roger tells me
Our goal is to collect as many examples of American Jewish album covers as we can to create an exhibition which represents a telling of changing Jewish ideas, notions of community, and external realities as told through the most popular of art forms that are now rotting away in attics across the nation
Some of the covers we have are aesthetically gorgeous, some less so — but through their collective gathering you can trace such issues as the rise of, and changing representation of, Israel in the American Jewish consciousness, Jewish relations with other minorities — African American and Latino, representations of Jewish family, ritual etc… as well as the changing face of the Jewish aesthetic itself
So when you’re home for Christmas, Christmukkah, Kwanzakkah, Chriswanzakkah, Hanukkah this season, raid your Ima’s and bubby’s attic and find these fine fellas some of those album covers they need and be a part of the ever shifting corpus of Jewish self understanding.
Scan them in and email them to email@hippocampusmusic.com. The party just keeps getting better.
Rabbi Yonah
12/23/2005
If you have not seen Guilt & Pleasure, then you are missing out on even more talents of Roger & Co.. While not your Artscroll Chanukah Guide, this amazing feast of visual anthropology and reflective writing. I was skeptical at first, but after getting a copy at the Hillel Jewpro Shindig in CT this week, I can honestly say, —wow.