The pre-2002 Charming Hostess (also known as Charming Hostes… Read Full Bio ↴Early Work:
The pre-2002 Charming Hostess (also known as Charming Hostess Big Band) was a rock band that embraced a genderfuck sensibility (the women often wore mustaches while the men wore dresses). Early Charming Hostess music drew on women's vocal traditions (primarily from Eastern Europe and North Africa), and integrated them with American folk forms both white and black. Charming Hostess was founded in the fertile anarchy of Barrington Co-op (aka Barrington Hall), and nurtured by the West Oakland arts community, along with other coeval bands such as Fibulator and Eskimo. Half of Charming Hostess was also in Idiot Flesh/Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. The final effect was of a hoedown where bodacious babes belted the blues in Bulgarian while a Punk-Klezmer band rocked out in accompaniment.
The genre of this incarnation of ChoHo is described by the band as "Klezmer-Punk/Balkan-Funk". Recordings of Charming Hostess Big Band include "Eat" (Vaccination, 1998) and the more recent "Punch" (ReR, 2005) Charming Hostess Big Band was: Jewlia Eisenberg (voice, direction), Carla Kihlstedt (voice, fiddle), Nina Rolle (voice, accordion), Wes Anderson (drums), Nils Frykdahl (guitar, flute, saxophone, percussion), and Dan Rathbun (bass)."
Jewlia Eisenberg, Marika Hughes, Cynthia Taylor,
Jason Ditzian, Shahzad Ismaily, Ches Smith.
- plus, often Ganda Suthivarakom and/or Pameliya Kursten (all vocals).
Honored guests on 2010 The Bowls Project album include:
Marc Ribot, Jenny Scheinman, Megan Gould, Jessica Troy, Nils Frykdahl, Dawn McCarthy, Ganda Suthivarakom, Boris Martzinovsky, Aaron Kierbel, and Nir Waxman.
Current Work:
The Bowls Project, an album and installation from Charming Hostess released Summer 2010.
The Bowls Project Album:
Based on inscriptions from ancient Babylonian Jewish amulets, The Bowls Project, Tzadik sings of mysticism and magic, angels and demons, and the trials and joys of love and sex. Especially audible are the voices of Talmudic-era women: their work, hopes and dreams. Weaving together Babylonian devotional songs, apocalyptic American folk music and a radical take on ritual power, The Bowls Project marks the deepest and most creative work by Charming Hostess yet.
The Bowls Project Installation & Sound Sculpture:
As a performance installation and interactive sound sculpture that takes place in a 40’ vaulted dome. Featuring new music composed and performed by Jewlia Eisenberg and Charming Hostess, The Bowls Project is based on texts from ancient Babylonian amulets. The culmination of five years of research, The Bowls Project will
run June through August 2010 at Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts. An estimated 15,000 people will visit and interact with
the installation.
The Bowls Project Background:
Bowl amulets were common 1500 years ago in the area
that is now Iraq. Simple bowls were inscribed with a
householder’s secrets and desires and then buried under
the doorway to protect the home. The bowl texts are
about “secrets of the home”: love and intimacy, angels and
demons, and the trials and joys of daily life. Audible in these
texts are the individual voices of women from this period
-their work, hopes, and dreams. These spiraled inscriptions
are among the few existing records of female voices during
the time and place of the Babylonian Talmud.
All Work:
The music primarily springs from three women with an emphasis in the body--voices and vocal percussion, hand claps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. The work grows from diaspora consciousness: both Jewish and African. Stylistically, Charming Hostess incorporates doo-wop, Pygmy counterpoint, Balkan harmony and Andalusian melody. Contemporary influences on the band include Meredith Monk and Reinette l'Oranaise. The music often explores existing text and overlays the composer's (Jewlia Eisenberg) own questions of authenticity, montage, and the effect of music on non-verbal languages.
The 2002 CD (Trilectic, Tzadik Records) explored the political/erotic nexus of Walter Benjamin and his Marxist muse, Asja Lacis. The 2004 CD (Sarajevo Blues, Tzadik) sets Bosnian poetry by Semezdin Mehmedinović as a form of love and resistance to the brutalization of war.
A Relatively Calm Day
Charming Hostess Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
2. A flustered young man begs to cut into the water line. He shows his plastic canister. The line twists to make a place for him. Since he's already loaded his canister, he hurries to the end of the street and gets hit by a grenade. All that's left of him is a bloody trail on the pavement that's like sap but is easier to clean. Just then it starts raining and everything gets washed away: not even a trace of the young guy is left, nor a trace of the canister. Just water. As if nothing on the street changed, except everyone got just a bit quieter.
The lyrics of Charming Hostess's song A Relatively Calm Day address the everyday violence and destruction that people living in areas of conflict and war have to endure. The first verse refers to daily reports that downplay the severity of the situation despite the fact that downtown is being hit by shells and snipers are in action. The phrase "a relatively calm day has passed," implies that this sort of violence is considered normal and thus becomes normalized, and that any day without a extreme bloodshed can be considered a "relatively calm day".
The second verse focuses on a specific event, where a young man is trying to get some water but ends up getting killed by a grenade. The scene is chaotic and yet, as the rain falls, the bloody trail on the pavement disappears and it is as if nothing ever happened. This poignant image highlights the tragic and fleeting nature of human life and the way wars can strip away humanity and reduce people to mere statistics. The line "everyone got just a bit quieter" suggests that in the face of such violence, people become more reserved and introspective, internalizing the horrors they see on a daily basis.
Overall, the song is an emotional commentary on the way violence shapes and defines the day-to-day reality of people living in areas of conflict. It provides a raw and unflinching look at the devastating impact that war has on individual lives and communities, and serves as a reminder that even on relatively calm days, the violence and destruction never truly goes away.
Line by Line Meaning
In the daily reports - when a dozen of shells hit downtown, when snipers are in action and only a few have been killed or wounded - we are informed that a relatively calm day has passed.
Amidst the constant violence and chaos of war, even a day with just a few casualties is considered 'calm' by those who must report on it.
A flustered young man begs to cut into the water line. He shows his plastic canister. The line twists to make a place for him. Since he's already loaded his canister, he hurries to the end of the street and gets hit by a grenade. All that's left of him is a bloody trail on the pavement that's like sap but is easier to clean. Just then it starts raining and everything gets washed away: not even a trace of the young guy is left, nor a trace of the canister. Just water. As if nothing on the street changed, except everyone got just a bit quieter.
In the midst of a war-torn city, even those who are simply trying to access basic necessities like water can become victims of the violence. The tragic fate of one young man is quickly erased by the constant storm of destruction and loss, leaving the impression that nothing has changed except for the pervasive sense of sadness and silence.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA/AMCOS
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