Punk rock is a music genre that emerged in the mid-1970s. Rooted in 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock music. They typically produced short, fast-paced songs with hard-edged melodies and singing styles, stripped-down instrumentation, and often shouted political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY ethic; many bands self-produce recordings and distribute them through independent record labels.
Hardcore punk is a punk rock music genre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. It is generally faster, harder, and more aggressive than other forms of punk rock. Its roots can be traced to earlier punk scenes in San Francisco and Southern California which arose as a reaction against the still predominant hippie cultural climate of the time. It was also inspired by Washington D.C. and New York punk rock and early proto-punk. Hardcore punk generally disavows commercialism, the established music industry and "anything similar to the characteristics of mainstream rock" and often addresses social and political topics with "confrontational, politically-charged lyrics."
Post-hardcore is a punk rock music genre that maintains the aggression and intensity of hardcore punk but emphasizes a greater degree of creative expression. It was initially inspired by post-punk and noise rock. Like the term "post-punk", the term "post-hardcore" has been applied to a broad constellation of groups. Post-hardcore began in the 1980s with bands like Hüsker Dü and Minutemen. The genre expanded in the 1980s and 1990s with releases by bands from cities that had established hardcore scenes, such as Fugazi from Washington, D.C. as well as groups such as Big Black, Jawbox, Quicksand, and Shellac that stuck closer to post-hardcore's noise rock roots. Dischord Records became a major nexus of post-hardcore during this period. The genre also began to incorporate more dense, complex, and atmospheric instrumentals with bands like Slint and Unwound, and also experienced some crossover from indie rock with bands like The Dismemberment Plan. In the early- and mid-2000s, post-hardcore achieved mainstream success with the popularity of bands like At the Drive-In, My Chemical Romance, Dance Gavin Dance, AFI, Underoath, Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, The Used, Saosin, Alexisonfire, and Senses Fail. In the 2010s, bands like Sleeping with Sirens and Pierce the Veil achieved mainstream success under the post-hardcore label. Meanwhile, bands like Title Fight and La Dispute experienced underground popularity playing music that bore a closer resemblance to the post-hardcore bands of the 1980s and 1990s.
Punk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk subculture and punk rock. It is primarily concerned with concepts such as mutual aid, against selling out, hierarchy, white supremacy, authoritarianism, eugenics, class and classism, while supporting anti-consumerism, anti-corporatism, anti-war, imperialism, conservatism, anti-globalization, gentrification, anti-racism, anti-sexism, gender equality, racial equality, animal rights, free-thought and non-conformity. One of its main tenets is a rejection of mainstream, corporate mass culture and its values. It continues to evolve its ideology as the movement spreads throughout North America from its origins in England and New York and embraces a range of anti-racist and anti-sexist belief systems. Punk does not necessarily lend itself to any particular political ideology as it is primarily anti-establishment although leftist punk is more common due to the prevalence of liberal and conservative ideologies in the status-quo.
Mordechai Werdyger is an American Israeli Chasidic Jewish singer and songwriter who is popular in the Orthodox Jewish community. He is the son of cantor David Werdyger and uses the stage name Mordechai Ben David or its initials, MBD. He is known as the "King of Jewish Music" and has released over 40 albums while performing internationally. He headlined the HASC and Ohel charity concerts for years. On February 27, 2022, he was inducted with the inaugural class of the Jewish Music Hall of Fame.
Goldblade are an English punk rock band from Manchester, England. The band formed in early 1995 when ex Membranes frontman, John Robb, put the band together with Wayne Simmons and former Membranes and A Witness vocalist Keith Curtis on bass, Rob Haynes on drums and Jay Taylor on guitar.
New Red Archives is an American independent record label based in California's San Francisco Bay Area, mainly home to punk rock bands. Started in 1987, the label began by releasing punk and hardcore punk records on coloured vinyl. Starting in summer 1990 after a re-location from Brooklyn, the label was based out of Hollywood. In 1996 The label signed an exclusive distribution deal with Dutch East India Trading. By 1998 the label had moved to San Francisco. Starting in the early 2000s the label released CDs as well as vinyl, through the distribution company Lumberjack Mordam Music Group.
Oi! is a subgenre of punk rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The music and its associated subculture had the goal of bringing together punks, skinheads, and other disaffected working-class youth. The movement was partly a response to the perception that many participants in the early punk rock scene were, in the words of The Business guitarist Steve Kent, "trendy university people using long words, trying to be artistic... and losing touch."
Messianism in Chabad refers to the contested beliefs among some members of the Chabad-Lubavitch community—a group within Hasidic Judaism—regarding the Jewish messiah. Some members of the Chabad community believe that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the deceased seventh Rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch dynasty, is the Jewish messiah. The issue remains controversial within both the Chabad movement and the broader Jewish community.
Erez Safar is an Author, American DJ, producer and songwriter who records under the names Diwon and h2the. He is CEO of Bancs Media, an American production company specializing in music and video production; Studio Bancs, a creative art space; and Shemspeed, a record label and promotional agency. He is the founder and director of the Sephardic Music Festival, and Gallery 38 in Los Angeles.
Schmekel was an all-transgender, Jewish folk punk band from Brooklyn, New York, known for their satirical lyrical material. Eddy Portnoy of The Forward cited Schmekel as an example of the cultural movement "Queer Yiddishkeit." Schmekel made their audiences more comfortable with transgender topics through jokes, but also often included lyrical references to obscure queer, Jewish, and punk content that only cultural insiders would recognize. Hugh Ryan for The New York Times compared Schmekel's sound to Pansy Division and compared Lucian Kahn's songwriting to Jewish singer/songwriter and satirist Tom Lehrer. The Advocate compared Schmekel to Pansy Division and Tribe 8, and the book Listen to Punk Rock! Exploring a Musical Genre compared Schmekel’s song “I’ll Be Your Maccabee” to Pansy Division’s song “Homo Christmas.” Schmekel's lyrics frequently referred to Jewish holidays, and their first album started with Kahn sounding the Yom Kippur "tekiah" and bassist Nogga Schwartz blowing a shofar before launching into a punk song. The Jewish Music Resource Centre at Hebrew University of Jerusalem noted that Schmekel's music used "direct musical quotes from traditional Jewish melodies such as Chad Gadya, Ma'oz Tzur, and Al Chet”. Professor of Musicology Edwin Seroussi compared Schmekel’s tongue-in-cheek allusions to prayers to similar inside jokes in Yiddish theatre and vaudeville at the turn of the 20th century.
Michael Wagner, sometimes credited as Menashe Yaakov and Don Bonus, is an American musician and producer based in Long Beach, New York. He played on many early Daptone Records releases and, with bands The Daktaris and Antibalas, helped inspire new interest in Nigerian funk and afrobeat music in America during the late nineties. After becoming a Hasidic Jew in 2004, he returned to New York and formed several bands with musicians in the local Jewish community, most notably the hardcore punk band Moshiach Oi!.
Yishai Romanoff is an American Hasidic musician, best known as the lead singer for the Breslov punk band Moshiach Oi!. Romanoff, as well as the rest of the band, is featured prominently in the 2012 documentary Punk Jews. He is also a drummer for Shabasa labelmates Blanket Statementstein, RockaZion, and Shin Shin Mem.
Eden Daniel Pearlstein, better known by his stage name Eprhyme, is an American Jewish rapper and producer based in Brooklyn, New York. While attending The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, he became involved with the Olympia music scene as half of the hip hop duo Saints of Everyday Failures, with which he released two albums. According to Nic Leonard of the Weekly Volcano, Eprhyme "played a major roll [sic] in the creation of the Olympia hip-hop scene." He was noticed by local independent label K Records, who released his first two singles, "Punklezmerap" and "Shomer Salaam". He then released his debut album, Waywordwonderwill (2009), through Shemspeed Records, before returning to K Records for his follow-up, Dopestylevsky (2011). He is currently part of the alternative hip hop groups Darshan, with vocalist Basya Schechter, and Ruthless Cosmopolitans, with Jon Madof.
Benzion Hakohen "Benny" Friedman is an American Hasidic Jewish singer and a non-pulpit rabbi. Professionally trained in voice, he rose to prominence on the Orthodox pop scene with his first album in 2009. Singing mainly in Hebrew, Friedman tours extensively and also appears in music videos. He views his music as a shlichus (outreach) tool, with the goal of drawing Jews closer to Judaism.
Punk Jews is a 2012 American documentary film directed by Jesse Zook Mann and produced by Saul Sudin, Evan Kleinman, and Alexander Emanuele. The film profiles several non-traditional Orthodox Jewish artists, activists, and groups based in New York City.
Better Get Ready is the debut studio album by American Hasidic punk band Moshiach Oi!. The album, produced by guitarist Mike Wagner and mastered by Don Fury, was released on June 20, 2009 through Shemspeed Records and the band's own Shabasa Records.
Jewish rock is a form of contemporary Jewish religious music that is influenced by various forms of secular rock music. Pioneered by contemporary folk artists like Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and the Diaspora Yeshiva Band, the genre gained popularity in the 1990s and 2000s with bands like Soulfarm, Blue Fringe, and Moshav Band that appealed to teens and college students, while artists like Matisyahu enjoyed mainstream crossover success.
Patrick Beaulier, known formerly by his professional name as Patrick Aleph, is an American writer, blogger, podcaster, non-denominational rabbi and spiritual leader, educator, and retired punk musician. He has been the lead vocalist for the bands The Love Drunks, Can Can, and Ice Bats. He is also the co-founder and creative director of PunkTorah, a non-profit website and Jewish outreach organization, and its subsidiaries OneShul.org and Darshan Yeshiva, an online synagogue and yeshiva, respectively. He has written for Jewcy, The Atlanta Jewish Times, and The Times of Israel, and hosts the semi-weekly Rabbi Patrick Podcast.
There exists a long-standing and well-documented relationship between Jews and punk rock. This includes multiple prominent Jewish musicians, promoters, and label executives who were involved in the development of punk in the 1970s and 1980s, the continued presence of prominent Jewish artists and personalities in the genre in the modern era, a small but noteworthy punk rock scene in Israel, and a more recent loose proto-scene of explicitly Jewish-themed punk bands and artists.
