Charming Hostess

Last updated
Charming Hostess
CharmingHostess-Trio.jpg
The Charming Hostess trio, Jewlia Eisenberg, Cynthia Taylor, & Marika Hughes (Left to Right)
Background information
Origin Oakland, California, United States
Genres Vocal music
A cappella
Experimental Music
Ethnic Music
Jewish Music
Years active1999present
Labels Tzadik Records
Members Jewlia Eisenberg, Marika Hughes, Cynthia Taylor, Jason Ditzian, Shahzad Ismaily, and Ches Smith.
Past members Nils Frykdahl
Dan Rathbun
Carla Kihlstedt
Wes Anderson
Nina Rolle
Amy Armstrong

Charming Hostess is a band that grew out of the avant-rock scene of Oakland, California in the mid-1990s.

Contents

Current work

The music of Charming Hostess primarily springs from three women with an emphasis in the body—voices and vocal percussion, handclaps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. The work grows from diaspora consciousness: both Jewish and African. Stylistically, Charming Hostess incorporates doo-wop, Pygmy counterpoint, Balkan harmony and Andalusian melody. Contemporary influences on the band include Meredith Monk and Reinette l'Oranaise. The music often explores existing text and overlays the composer's (Jewlia Eisenberg) own questions of authenticity, montage, and the effect of music on non-verbal languages.

The Bowls Project Album (Release Summer 2010): Based on inscriptions from ancient Babylonian Jewish amulets, The Bowls Project, as Charming Hostess. (Tzadik Records, Radical Jewish Culture, 2010) sings of mysticism and magic, angels and demons, and the trials and joys of love and sex. Especially audible are the voices of Talmudic-era women: their work, hopes and dreams. Weaving together Babylonian devotional songs, apocalyptic American folk music and a radical take on ritual power. Honored guests on 2010 The Bowls Project album include: Marc Ribot, Jenny Scheinman, Megan Gould, Jessica Troy, Nils Frykdahl, Dawn McCarthy, Ganda Suthivarakom, Boris Martzinovsky, Aaron Kierbel, and Nir Waxman.

The Bowls Project Installation & Sound Sculpture: As a performance installation and interactive sound sculpture that takes place in a 40’ Catalan vault designed by architect Michael Ramage. Featuring new music composed and performed by Jewlia Eisenberg and Charming Hostess, The Bowls Project is based on texts from ancient Babylonian amulets. The culmination of five years of research, The Bowls Project was exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2010.

The Bowls Project Background: Bowl amulets also known as Incantation bowls were common 1500 years ago in the area that is now Iraq. Simple bowls were inscribed with a householder's secrets and desires and then buried under the doorway to protect the home. The bowl texts are about “secrets of the home”: love and intimacy, angels and demons, and the trials and joys of daily life. Audible in these texts are the individual voices of women from this period - their work, hopes, and dreams. These spiraled inscriptions are among the few existing records of female voices during the time and place of the Babylonian Talmud.

The 2002 CD Trilectic (Tzadik Records) explored the political/erotic nexus of Walter Benjamin and his Marxist muse, Asja Lācis. The 2004 CD Sarajevo Blues (Tzadik) sets Bosnian poetry by Semezdin Mehmedinović as a form of love and resistance to the brutalization of war.

Their self-described genre is “Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girly”. Charming Hostess is Jewlia Eisenberg, Marika Hughes, Cynthia Taylor and often Ganda Suthivarakom and Pameliya Kursten (all vocals).

Early work

The pre-2002 Charming Hostess (also known as Charming Hostess Big Band) was a rock band that embraced a genderfuck sensibility (the women often wore mustaches while the men wore dresses). Early Charming Hostess music drew on women's vocal traditions (primarily from Eastern Europe and North Africa) and integrated them with American folk forms both white and black. Charming Hostess was founded in the fertile anarchy of Barrington Co-op (aka Barrington Hall), and nurtured by the West Oakland arts community, along with other coeval bands such as Fibulator and Eskimo. [1] Half of Charming Hostess was also in Idiot Flesh/Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. The final effect was of a hoedown where bodacious babes belted the blues in Bulgarian while a punk-klezmer band rocked out in accompaniment.

The genre of this incarnation of ChoHo is described by the band as “Klezmer-Punk/Balkan-Funk”. Recordings of Charming Hostess Big Band include Eat (Vaccination, 1998) and Punch (ReR, 2005). Charming Hostess Big Band was: Jewlia Eisenberg (voice, direction), Carla Kihlstedt (voice, fiddle), Nina Rolle (voice, accordion), Wes Anderson (drums), Nils Frykdahl (guitar, flute, saxophone, percussion), Jenny Scheinman (fiddle), and Dan Rathbun (bass) [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Masada (band)</span>

Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art Bears</span> English avant-rock group

Art Bears were an English avant-rock group formed during the disassembly of Henry Cow in 1978 by three of its members, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith and Dagmar Krause. The group released three studio albums between 1978 and 1981, and toured Europe in 1979.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Charles</span> American singer

Jennifer Charles is an American singer and songwriter. Along with Oren Bloedow, she co-founded the New York band Elysian Fields. Her work is known for its emotional intensity, with her writing exploring nature, love, loss, death, myth, and identity, often with philosophical and literary influences. She has a contralto voice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trevor Dunn</span> American musician (born 1968)

Trevor Roy Dunn is an American composer, bass guitarist, and double bassist. He came to prominence in the 1990s with the experimental band Mr. Bungle. While performing with Mr. Bungle, Dunn would dress similar to the St. Pauli Girl. He has since worked in an array of musical styles, including with saxophonist/composer John Zorn, Secret Chiefs 3 and with his own avant-garde jazz/rock ensemble Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant. He is also a member of the band Tomahawk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carla Kihlstedt</span> American violinist, singer and composer

Carla Kihlstedt is an American composer, violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and currently working from a home studio on Cape Cod.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Medeski</span> American jazz keyboardist and composer

Anthony John Medeski is an American jazz keyboard player and composer. Medeski is a veteran of New York's 1990s avant-garde jazz scene and is known popularly as a member of Medeski Martin & Wood. He plays the acoustic piano and an eclectic array of keyboards, including the Hammond B3 organ, melodica, mellotron, clavinet, ARP String Ensemble, Wurlitzer electric piano, Moog Voyager Synthesizer, Wurlitzer 7300 Combo Organ, Vox Continental Baroque organ, and Yamaha CS-1 Synthesizer, among others. When playing acoustic piano, Medeski usually plays the Steinway piano and is listed as a Steinway Artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Billy Martin (percussionist)</span> American jazz drummer (born 1963)

Billy Martin is an American jazz drummer, best known as a member of jazz-funk trio Medeski Martin & Wood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Scharpling</span> American comedian, writer, and actor

Thomas John Giuliano II, known professionally as Tom Scharpling, is an American comedian, television writer, producer, music video director, voice actor, and radio host. He is best known for hosting the weekly Internet radio call-in comedy program The Best Show with Tom Scharpling, the voice of Greg Universe in the animated series Steven Universe and its sequel series Steven Universe Future, and for acting as a writer/executive producer for the TV show Monk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyro Baptista</span> Brazilian-born percussionist

Cyro Baptista is a Brazilian-born percussionist in jazz and world music. He creates many of the percussion instruments he plays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ned Rothenberg</span> American musician and composer

Ned Rothenberg is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer. He specializes in woodwind instruments, including the alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, and shakuhachi. He is known for his work in contemporary classical and free improvisation. Rothenberg is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He was a founding member of the woodwind trio New Winds with J. D. Parran and Robert Dick. He has performed with Samm Bennett, Paul Dresher, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, Yuji Takahashi, Sainkho Namtchylak, and Katsuya Yokoyama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uri Caine</span> American pianist and composer

Uri Caine is an American classical and jazz pianist and composer.

Pharaoh's Daughter is an American Jewish world music band from New York City. Formed in 1995 by Basya Schechter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewlia Eisenberg</span> American composer (died 2021)

Jewlia Eisenberg was an American singer, composer, bassist, educator, and cantor. As founder and bandleader of Charming Hostess she coined the term "Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girly" to describe her genre of music which spans an eclectic range of styles.

Nils Frykdahl is an American musician, most known for his work with the bands Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Idiot Flesh. He is also a member of the bands Free Salamander Exhibit, Faun Fables, and Darling Freakhead, and used to be a member of Charming Hostess. Along with bandmates Carla Kihlstedt and Dan Rathbun, Frykdahl is active with the performance company Ink Boat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Amendola</span> American drummer (born 1969)

Scott Amendola is an American drummer from the San Francisco Bay Area. His styles include jazz, blues, groove, and rock.

<i>Little Princess</i> (album) 2009 studio album by Tim Sparks

Little Princess is the eighth album by guitarist Tim Sparks and his fourth on the Tzadik Records label. It is a tribute album to the music of Klezmer clarinetist Naftule Brandwein.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tzadik Records</span> American record label

Tzadik Records is a record label in New York City that specializes in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995. He is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases. Tzadik is a not-for-profit, cooperative record label.

Jesse Krakow is an American musician, bassist, producer, and composer based in New York City.

Steve Cardenas is a guitarist who began his career in Kansas City, Missouri and has been part of the New York City jazz community since 1995.

References

  1. Wilensky, David A. M. (16 March 2021). "In memoriam: Jewlia Eisenberg, a shining star in the musical Jewniverse". J.
  2. Davidow, Ari (21 November 2000). "Klezmershack review: Charming Hostess / Eat".
  1. "Monk, Eisenberg and Banhart: Oh Me, Oh My, They're So Unusual". Observer. 2002-12-02. Retrieved 2022-05-03.