Masada obsession
I just can’t understand it. Whenever I heard about Jewish music, I was never interested. What’s interesting in it anyway? Same melodies played in such a characteristic way, that you can’t recognize which band is playing. All those violin solos and similar rhythms — it’s just boring, isn’t it? Of course it is. Until you hear Masada playing.
It’s a project led by John Zorn, my beloved, noisy saxophonist, and it’s been playing since early 1990s. The idea is to create a “songbook”, consisting of a large number of simple melodies, which can be played by small bands. But that’s not good enough to claim Masada a special project to me. John Zorn puts it that way: “The idea with Masada is to produce a sort of radical Jewish music, a new Jewish music which is not the traditional one in a different arrangement, but music for the Jews of today. The idea is to put Ornette Coleman and the Jewish scales together.” So what we got? Tons of free-jazz-noise and beautiful 
Jewish melodies mixed up together. Sounds impossible? Not even it is possible, it’s amazing.
My first contact with the group was two years ago, when I heard the album by Electric Masada, a live record titled “50th birthday celebration, vol. 4”. The word “live” doesn’t give a proper impression of this record. I’d rather say: “wild”. Imagine a group of instrumentalists playing free-jazz music in Jewish scales, with an electric guitar (plus a strong distortion effect), bass guitar, drums and percussion, electric piano, electronic noises (awesome Ikue Mori), and Zorn with his screaming saxophone on top of all that. Sounds a bit terrible, but it’s more than marvelous. The effect they’re getting is something between trash metal and free jazz, with a lot of gorgeous melodies. So if you want to hear something really strong and weird, Electric Masada is your band. (Though if you’re really tough, and want something stronger, grab their second album: “At the mountains of madness”; everything that was said regarding their first record applies to the second one, only that it’s just more intense…)
Listening to Electric Masada brought me to the roots of this evil music, which is much more polite and a bit more chamber. Original Masada, or rather their first record “Alef” (which is unfortunately the only one I know) brings peaceful sounds, but it’s definitely not as dull as all those klezmer bands.
If you like dull klezmer guys though, you might get closer to them while listening to Masada String Trio. Three lads + a conductor sitting between them play Masada compositions in a more elegant and traditional way. Not as traditional as Cracow Klezmer Band of course, but you wouldn’t expect something conservative from Zorn now, would you?
Now, for the sake of completeness, let me link to some nice video, featuring Electric Masada playing “Tekufah”. Enjoy the noise and the harmony!