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.
Death Is A Job
Charming Hostess Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
They're doing their job, in deep cover.
If a bullet hit me they'd get a shot worth so much more than my life that I'm not even sure whom to hate:
The Chetnik sniper or these monkeys with Nikons.
For the Chetniks I'm just a simple target but those othersconfirm my utter helplessness and even want to take advantage of it.
In Sarajevo, death is a job for all of them.
Life has been narrowed down completely, reduced to gestures...a man covering his head with a newspaper as he runs across the same street, scared of a sniper's bullet.
The lyrics of Charming Hostess's song Death Is A Job delve into the harrowing experiences of civilians in war-torn cities. The opening lines depict a scene where the singer is attempting to dodge a sniper's bullet by crossing an intersection, only to accidentally walk into a group of photographers in hiding. The intensity of the situation is accentuated by the fact that these photographers would benefit from capturing an image of the singer being shot by the sniper; a chilling reminder of the mercenary nature of war journalism.
The lyrics go on to convey the feeling of helplessness and vulnerability felt by civilians in such situations. The singer feels like a simple target to the Chetnik sniper, but the appearance of the photographers seems to amplify the sense of desperation, as if the singer's life is reduced to nothing more than a potentially lucrative photograph. The final line, "In Sarajevo, death is a job for all of them," is particularly poignant, highlighting the tragedy of war when, instead of being a means of protecting or defending, taking life becomes a source of income.
Line by Line Meaning
I'm running across an intersection to avoid the bullet of a sniper from the hill when I walk straight into some photographers:
Despite trying to avoid danger, I unintentionally encountered some photographers who are working undercover.
They're doing their job, in deep cover.
The photographers are simply doing their work while hiding their true identity.
If a bullet hit me they'd get a shot worth so much more than my life that I'm not even sure whom to hate:
If I got shot, the photographers could obtain a valuable photo that outweighs my life's worth, making me unsure of whom to blame; the sniper or the photographers.
For the Chetniks I'm just a simple target but those othersconfirm my utter helplessness and even want to take advantage of it.
The Chetniks view me as an easy target, but the photographers make me feel helpless and even seem to capitalize on that vulnerability.
In Sarajevo, death is a job for all of them.
In Sarajevo, people have become so accustomed to death that it has become a profession for everyone, including the photographers and snipers.
Life has been narrowed down completely, reduced to gestures...a man covering his head with a newspaper as he runs across the same street, scared of a sniper's bullet.
Life in Sarajevo has become very limited and comparable to mere acts of survival; a person running across the street with a newspaper covering their head as they fear for their life.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
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