Sunday, September 5, 2010

Lunatic Rabbis and Demented Irish Rap (Waited 'Til Midnight For This One)

I keep reading this one story thinking it must be a joke, an Onion article, but it seems to be legit: Jerusalem - ‘Sinner’ Singer Given 'malkas' 39 Lashes By Rabbis [video]
A singer who performed in front of a “mixed audience” of men and women was lashed 39 times to make him “repent,” after a ruling by a self-described rabbinic court on Wednesday.
Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, founder of the Shofar organization aimed at bringing Jews “back to religion” (hazara betshuva), has made it his recent mission to fight against musical performances for both men and women.
His “judicial panel,” with Rabbi Ben Zion Mutsafi and another member, sentenced Erez Yechiel to 39 lashes in order to “rid him of his sins.”
I probably shouldn't hold any religious group in higher regard than any other. It's tempting though, between the Jewish literary tradition, Jon Stewart, and all, to think that faith must not be as intellectually crippling as some of the others. Then you see stuff like this and come back to earth. Their freaks are as freaky as the Islamic fundies, the Christian fundies, and whatever other fundies you've got.

But the reason I'm burying this post in the middle of the night is on account of the absolutely hilarious, effed-up rap stylings of these Irish nutters. Killing me, they are. I'm afraid if I put one of these on the iPod and it comes at work ... you know how with headphones on it's possible to hum or even sing under your breath a bit before you remember you're around other people? ... well, I'd get fired or murdered if it happened while I was listening to Captain Moonlight or the Rubberbandits. These fellas are NSFW, deranged, and you're not going to want to play this on a public machine, just don't. The post I found 'em in is "A Five-Part Guide To Irish Viral Videos: Part One, Irish Rap" by Sean McTiernan at the Awl. It's worth reading even if you can't stomach the music.
Ireland has a rich history of political satire; the quality of our radio political comedy is impossible to explain to a nation accustomed to "Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me." It’s usually completely surreal, intensely cruel and totally spot on. A rapper from Kilkenny (the same claustrophobic tourist town that spawned such music icons as RSAG and …um…see below) called Captain Moonlight opted for a more-direct-than-usual approach. The people he’s talking about are all Irish politicians and sadly, he’s actually quite right. Upon hearing this, you’ll understand that Cee-lo Green’s supposedly cathartic late summer hit falls a bit flat compared to this. And sure one might be a fairly effective pop soul novelty song and the other is something you’d fine written in excrement on the walls of an asylum, but you can’t fault the honesty of my fellow Kilkenny man.
This one is the Rubberbandits, not the Captain Moonlight mentioned above, I'm debating how many of these things to put directly in this post.  For this one, skip to :45 or even 1:20, heck, consider skipping it all together:


Y'know, I was going to put a Captain Moonlight here too, but if you read the article you'll get a dose of it and pointers for others to check out. One's enough for here.

My wife just hollered from the other room to "turn that [unintelligble] down." It'll happen to you in your own home, too, if you're not careful. The perils of research.

I'm not totally sure why I jammed these two things in one post except I happened to see them one after the other; I think it's possible I'm experiencing some cognitive dissonance between my revulsion at the idea of rabbinical courts administering lashings to singers and some primitive lizard part of my brain informed by my Puritan ancestry telling me these Irish fellas could use a little discipline.

Kidding. It's definitely just that they were one after another in my RSS feed.
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