{"id":13751,"date":"2015-07-24T00:04:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T07:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=13751"},"modified":"2015-07-22T15:31:20","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T22:31:20","slug":"impromptu-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/07\/24\/impromptu-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Impromptu interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

After having spent decades trying to visit Wilensky\u2019s lunch counter, made famous by the Mordecai Richler novel and film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz<\/em>, I finally made it to the weekday-only Mile End joint in Montreal a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a modest place with a tiny menu \u2013 two main course options, a few beverages and \u2013 for those seeking vegetables \u2013 pickles. As I finished my Wilensky\u2019s Special (a fried bologna, salami and mustard sandwich on a kaiser) chased with a chocolate egg cream, I spotted a neighborhood fixture finishing his hotdog: Socalled (aka Josh Dolgin), the Yiddish hip-hop artist and music producer. He has been dubbed \u201chip-hop\u2019s answer to Mordecai Richler.\u201d<\/p>\n

We made our way to a St. Viateur patio for coffee as we spoke about his latest album, his growing up in Gatineau, Que., his love for early Yiddish film, his views on Zionism, and the art of musical \u201csampling.\u201d Our impromptu interview was interrupted frequently. Like the King of Kensington, Socalled seemed to know everyone in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Socalled had been on my radar since my husband brought home his Passover album, The Socalled Seder: A Hip-Hop Haggadah<\/em>, 10 years ago. In that album, ads for Manischewitz, along with Passover dinner table chatter, are sampled over a driving hip-hop beat; the track \u201cThe Ten Plagues\u201d features the lyricist rapping that \u201csometimes bad things happen to bad people for a good reason, you dig?,\u201d the \u201cMiriam Drum Song\u201d features an urgent fiddle, and the hip-hop single called \u201cWho Knows One\u201d is heavily klezmer inflected.<\/p>\n

His latest effort, Peoplewatching<\/em>, is perhaps more accessible musically, and is frequently quite beautiful, though whatever Jewish aspect is there is much more subtle. Still, Dolgin insists that his Yiddish interests influenced him. He explained that the track \u201cNever See You Again\u201d features a chord progression from an Abraham Ellstein song used in the wedding scene of the 1936 film Yidl Mitn Fidl<\/em> (Am, A7, D7, F7, E7, Am \u2013 for readers with a piano or guitar nearby). There are a couple of bits of klezmer. And there is a sad and pretty song about Shabbat candles starting a fire near his Hutchison Street apartment in Mile End.<\/p>\n

As for the sampling so integral to his music, Dolgin describes it as \u201cgiving you sounds with the atmosphere cooked in\u2026. It\u2019s archeological. It\u2019s like cultural alchemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

My fellow Canadians in particular will no doubt be tickled by the final track, \u201cCurried Soul 2.0.\u201d Familiar to radio listeners as the theme to the CBC Radio nightly current affairs program As it Happens<\/em>, \u201cCurried Soul\u201d is featured here in an extended version of the remix that CBC invited Socalled to produce. In a charming bit of hyperbole, Dolgin told a CBC interviewer that he was daunted and floored by the opportunity to tinker with the show\u2019s theme because he \u201cheard it every single day of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only Canadian listeners who have been privy to that storied evening broadcast: some Israelis have been featured on the show as well, including Meretz MK Michal Rozen and Tel Aviv-based pollster and political commentator Dahlia Scheindlin.<\/p>\n

These days, beyond promoting his new album, Dolgin is busy with a Yiddish barbershop quartet he founded called Julius, in homage to the Oscar Julius Quartet. Many of the songs Dolgin\u2019s quartet performs were originally in Yiddish translated into English, which Dolgin helps put back into Yiddish.<\/p>\n

I was curious about what motivated Socalled to seek out Yiddish in the first place (a trip to a Salvation Army vintage record collection supplemented by a textbook called College Yiddish<\/em>) and whether his continuing interest in the language and culture has anything to do with a rejection of Zionism \u2013 the nationalist movement which sought to \u201cnegate the Diaspora\u201d in its urgent, Hebrew nation-building project (not so, in his case).<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe in countries or nationalism,\u201d Dolgin said, \u201cbut if we are going to live in a world with countries or nations, it\u2019s not insane for the Jews to have a country.\u201d He added, \u201cI think Palestinians should have a home, too.\u201d That said, he stressed that he is \u201cmore ashamed by how Canada has treated its aboriginal people. I\u2019m more worried about the report on residential schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Politics aside, I wondered whether Dolgin gets to speak any Yiddish these days. He does: at Yiddish festivals around the world, with an \u201cold Jew he met in Russia\u201d and, most often, with his Chassidic landlord. It\u2019s Montreal\u2019s Mile End neighborhood, after all.<\/p>\n

Mira Sucharov<\/strong> is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at <\/em>Haaretz and the <\/em>Jewish Daily Forward. A version of this article was originally published on haartez.com. For an in-depth interview with Socalled, visit jewishindependent.ca\/oldsite\/archives\/oct11\/archives11oct07-01.html<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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