Similarly, Khazzoom and her band, Iraqis in Pajamas, recently released another poem-turned-song, \u201c#MahsaAmini.\u201d They did so this past Sept. 16, the first anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iranian \u201cmorality police.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finding out about Amini\u2019s murder soon after it took place, from TikTok videos posted by Iranian women, Khazzoom \u201cjumped into action.\u201d She wrote to her political representatives, raised funds for United 4 Iran and reposted Iranian women\u2019s videos on her feed constantly, to help boost the content\u2019s views. \u201cIn addition,\u201d she said, \u201ca day after I found out about what happened, a poem with my feelings poured out of me, and I posted it on social media. Months later, I put that poem to a melody, and the band developed it into a full band song, which we released on the [anniversary of the] day of Amini\u2019s murder.\u201d<\/p>\n
The death affected Khazzoom deeply for many reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst, the women in my family wore the abaya<\/i>, the Iraqi equivalent of the hijab \u2013 Jewish women throughout the region were subject to Muslim dress codes, so it\u2019s a Jewish issue, too,\u201d she said. \u201cSecond, so many people assume that Islam is indigenous throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but it\u2019s not. Arab Muslims rose up from the Arabian Peninsula and conquered the entire region, forcibly converting masses under the threat of death. So many indigenous ethnicities and religions predated the Muslim conquest, including Jews, Persians, Berbers and Kurds. The Iranian women protesting and burning their hijabs felt to me like challenging that Muslim conquest and awakening the ancient Persian warriors. Third, Persia is central to Jewish history and the origins of the Mizrahi community, dating back nearly three millennia ago\u2026. And, lastly, the fire of these women, and the men who joined them, and their willingness to risk their lives for their dignity and freedom was just breathtaking and profoundly inspirational.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another of Iraqis in Pajamas\u2019 releases this year was also intensely personal for Khazzoom.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote \u2018The Convert\u2019s Quest\u2019 in response to some friends on social media sharing how hurt they were, coming under attack during the process of their conversion to Judaism. I had ample experience witnessing variations on this theme throughout my life \u2013 both first-person, seeing it happen to friends, and through my research as a Jewish multicultural educator. For decades, I felt very disturbed by this seemingly growing trend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am the daughter of a Jew by choice, as my mother called herself, so the matter of conversion to Judaism is very personal for me,\u201d she said. \u201cI remember understanding very clearly as an Orthodox Jewish child that, according to halachah<\/i> (Jewish law), once you convert, you are no longer to be called \u2018a convert,\u2019 but rather, a Jew, period. So, even from a religious Jewish perspective itself, I was very distraught by the ways that Jewish leaders and communities were rejecting or harassing converts, or even all-out forbidding people from converting. It all flies in the face of Jewish history, theology and practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The band released \u201cThe Convert\u2019s Quest\u201d on May 24, on the harvest holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people and on which the Book of Ruth is read. It tells the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman who converted to Judaism, whom Jewish tradition teaches will be the ancestor of the Messiah.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, Jewish converts are the lifeblood of the Jewish people,\u201d said Khazzoom. \u201cI have a provocative line in my song, saying that converts are \u2018the most Jewish Jews of all,\u2019 because they are intentionally and consciously practising the foundational precepts of Judaism, which so many either take for granted or do rote, as is often the case in the Orthodox Jewish world where I was raised. In addition, amidst life-threatening levels of racism and violence against Jews, converts choose Judaism\u2026. Why would we reject, in any way, from subtle to blatant, someone with such a heroic Jewish soul?\u201d<\/p>\n
Even when delivered in a playful manner, Khazzoom\u2019s song are serious to the core. The campy \u201cKitchen Pirate,\u201d for example, \u201cemerged from my choice to reject the conventional option of surgery, in the wake of a cancer diagnosis in 2010,\u201d she said. \u201cInstead, I chose to radically alter my diet and lifestyle. Simply by overhauling my diet, I cold-stopped the growth of the nodules, which remained stable for the next five years \u2013 neither growing nor shrinking \u2013 until I returned to my lost-love of music, following which they began shrinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khazzoom said her songs \u201care always questioning, always challenging, always defiant. Sometimes, it\u2019s more explicit, other times it\u2019s embedded in silliness, which, parenthetically, I also see as defiant. I am and forever will be a curious, playful and awe-inspired child. I think that, if and when we \u2018outgrow\u2019 that, we die inside. And I refuse to capitulate to that norm of expected behaviour once we enter adulthood. By way of example, to this day, at age 54, when I am flying in a plane, if there is nobody sitting next to me, I will stretch out my arms and pretend I\u2019m a bird, during takeoff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everyone has appreciated this aspect of her personality. \u201cI have constantly gotten into trouble for it and have been at odds with my family, my community and society at large,\u201d said Khazzoom. \u201cI have endured terrible loneliness and often even self-doubt as a result. But I always come back to my core. And all of my songs emerge from that place \u2013 that raw, gut-wrenching place of being fiercely alive<\/i> and allowing the clash with everything around me, and then writing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is this enthusiasm that Victoria-based band member Mike Deeth enjoys about being in Iraqis in Pajamas, whose third member is Chris Belin.<\/p>\n
\u201cLoolwa and Chris are both easy-going, creative people. The energy is very positive, which makes collaborating with them fun and organic,\u201d Deeth told the Independent.<\/i> \u201cFurther, I appreciate the passion Loolwa has for the subject matter she writes about. One thing I always struggled with as a musician is \u2018What do I have to say?\u2019 At the end of the day, I\u2019m a privileged guy who has never had to face oppression, hate, war or genocide. I have a lot of respect for artists who have experienced darker parts of humanity and have the courage to bring that perspective into their art.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in Toronto, Deeth, who is not Jewish, spent most of his adolescence in Calgary, and moved to Vancouver Island when he was 18. He first picked up a guitar a few years earlier and has been playing ever since. \u201cI was in my first band at 18 and played in bands throughout my 20s. For the past several years, I have been mainly focused on recording,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Deeth got hooked on music production in his teens, getting his first digital recorder at age 16. \u201cI still remember pulling all-nighters with friends trying to write songs and get ideas down on tape. Production was always fascinating to me, as I could layer parts together into something bigger than I could ever play on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n Deeth and Khazzoom met a couple of years ago through a Craigslist posting. \u201cShe was looking for a guitarist to contribute to an early version of her track \u2018The Convert\u2019s Quest,\u2019\u201d he explained, complimenting Khazzoom on the fact that she \u201cputs her full heart into her songs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI recorded some initial guitar demos and, about a year later, we reconnected and worked up the current releases,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Deeth adds guitar to the songs and completes the mix and master of the songs when they are ready for those steps. Khazzoom sings, writes and plays bass, while Belin \u2013 who lives in Pennsylvania \u2013 composes the drum parts and performs them.<\/p>\n Among his other music ventures, Deeth has \u201cplayed the guitar with Bryce Allan, a country musician here on the island, and recorded a few tracks with him. I also work closely with Jennie Tuttle, another musician from Victoria. We have been recording together for seven or eight years now.\u201d<\/p>\n For Deeth, \u201crecording is such an interesting combination of art and science. I get to be musically creative, but I also get to play with cool machines, solve problems and think about gain staging, compression ratios and other technical aspects. I thoroughly enjoy both the artistic and scientific parts of the process \u2013 they work my mind in different ways.<\/p>\n \u201cI also love how each project starts as a blank canvas and ends with a new piece of music out in the world. There are an almost infinite number of possibilities when recording a track (all the possible settings on the equipment, the subtleties of different instruments) and it always fascinates me how each song takes shape during the process.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMike has an exquisite sensitivity in his musical composition, performance and recording,\u201d said Khazzoom. \u201cHe\u2019s not only super-talented and -skilled, but he\u2019s warm, upbeat, enthusiastic and professional. It\u2019s a joy to create music with him. As is the case with\u00a0our drummer Chris Belin, Mike has an uncanny ability to capture the essence of the songs I write, to the point that I feel he is playing back to me the sound of my soul. I have literally sat and cried after hearing the mixes.\u201d<\/p>\n For more on Khazzoom, visit khazzoom.com<\/a>. For more on Deeth\u2019s production and sound services, visit glowingwires.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Loolwa Khazzoom (photo by Moriel O\u2019Connor) \u201cDear Hostages, as the world rallies to celebrate your desecration I will not forsake you,\u201d begins the poem written by Seattle-based multimedia artist and educator Loolwa Khazzoom. Posted on her Facebook page, with a #BringThemHomeNow poster featuring photos of Israelis kidnapped on Oct. 7, it continues, \u201cMy instinct is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[725,22700,2462,20098,4330,218,9726,22805,22802,22725,3597,22804,22803,9011,1774],"class_list":["post-42880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-conversion","tag-hostages","tag-iran","tag-iraqis-in-pajamas","tag-israel","tag-judaism","tag-loolwa-khazzoom","tag-mahsa-amini","tag-mike-deeth","tag-oct-7","tag-politics","tag-punk-music","tag-recording","tag-social-commentary","tag-terrorism"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/dec-01-music.01.Iraqis-in-PJs-Mike-Deeth-w-guitar-image_50435073.jpg\")
<\/a>