Shayn on, you crazy diamond

>> A hybrid of hip hop and Hebraica is just the start for multifaceted Montrealer Socalled

BOUNDARY-BUSTING B-BOYCHIK: Socalled

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Whether you’re an indie popper or hip hopper, a world-beat turista or avant-garde actuellista, chances are, you know from Socalled, aka Josh Dolgin. The Montrealer wears many hats—journalist, animator, photographer and (he’d like to imagine) bar mitzvah magician—but it’s his musical efforts that shine brightest.

Dolgin is unique in fusing the sonic collages and snappy raps of hip hop with an in-depth grasp of klezmer and other sounds from Jewish history, and his trailblazing has attracted collaborators from here (Katie Moore, Ganesh Anandan, Subtitle, Manspino, Kali) and abroad (neo-klezmorim David Krakauer and Frank London, piano man Gonzales, James Brown’s brass master Fred Wesley, old-school entertainers Theodore Bikel and Irving Fields).

All do their part on the JDub Records release Ghettoblaster, his tightest—and paradoxically loosest—effort to date. Previous albums were sharply focused, thematically. 2003’s Hiphopkhasene was the wedding album, ’05’s Socalled Seder his Passover jam, the recent Bubbemeises a complex collab with Krakauer and friends. Ghettoblaster, however, is by necessity a patchwork, an exercise in carefully controlled chaos.

“The theme is coming together and blowing up boundaries,” explains Dolgin, “but the trick was, how do you make a crazy quilt that still keeps you warm? With over 40 guests recorded in 15 studios around the world, how do you make something that holds together?”

It was a challenge he couldn’t duck, because stylistic purism just ain’t his style. “I have too many influences, and I’m too confused. I don’t live a folk culture. I certainly can’t play klezmer and think that really represents who and what I am today. So it’s an experiment, and Ghettoblaster is the closest I’ve come so far.”

Hebrews on horseback

Dolgin’s proudest of two tracks on the album, the first being his “Jewish cowboy” song, “You Are Never Alone”—“I can still listen to it beginning to end and not cringe. It’s the closest I’ve come to a catchy pop song, but it’s not stupid. It’s got heart and it’s got a message.

“That was the beginning, and ‘(These Are the) Good Old Days’ shows where it’s going. It’s an original song, I made up the melody and hook. Then, to get Fred Wesley on top of it all—he closes the loop of my own personal history of music-making. I started off loving funk, that got me into hip hop, which got me collecting old records, which got me into klezmer and my own culture, that got me into this hip hop hybrid and that brought me back to the source—Fred Wesley.”

In the process of coming full circle, Dolgin’s picked up a global grab-bag of ideas, reflected in Ghettoblaster’s diversity. “When I got into klezmer, it opened me up to loving real music—not necessarily klezmer, but the real shit, from all cultures, and bringing those together. The more I do it, the less straight-up klezmer and hip hop my band becomes. It becomes a new thing—I hesitate to say that, but I don’t know what else to point to as an example of what I’m doing. Do you?”

Insane in the Ukraine

The other big news for Socalled is the recent musical cruise down the Dnieper River in the Ukraine, which he helmed. How it all came about and went down is a complicated yarn involving a family trip to his grandfather’s town Zaporojie, a sympathetic local Rabbi, a Yiddish folk singer who’d made plastics for Sputnik and a pistol-waving cruise-ship captain. The NFB is making a doc on the whole affair, and a little googling will lead to Dolgin’s boat-trip blog and YouTube clips. For all the cultural edification involved, though, the first things the phrase “klezmer cruise ship” might suggest are of course wacky hijinks and hilarious pratfalls.

The notion puts Dolgin on the defensive. “People think of klezmer as being circus music, and it’s not. If you listen to old klezmer, it’s not ridiculous. It’s got all that upbeat, joyous shit, but it’s not silly. It’s really funky and actually pretty dark and heavy.”

Not that anyone would see klezmer as gritty gangster music, of course… “I would! Especially in Odessa,” enthuses Dolgin. “You know Isaac Babel? He wrote about Jewish gangsters in Odessa, and there are klezmorim in these stories. Babel talks about them making the soundtrack to these fucking twisted, violent, amazing tales.

“Maybe it’s a combo of circus and gangster music?”

Maybe. And maybe Dolgin will have to admit that yes, a boatload of drunken klezmorim is a recipe for zany antics. “There was some fucking stupid shit that people did. Vodka was definitely involved, as well as some marijuana from Bessarabia. One night, my brother and my stupid, insane cousin jumped off the boat and back on, just because they were close to the side of these locks. The captain was about to shoot them. Literally.”

With guests at the St-Viateur Street
Festival (between Parc and St-Urbain)
on Friday, June 1, 7:30 p.m., free