Early Work:
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.

Open Dialogue
Charming Hostess Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

"What are you reading?"
"Poems by Rumi, a poet born in Afghanistan."
"Where are you from?"
"Bosnia."
"Serbs and Croats, right? Is anyone else there?"
"There are others."
"What color are your eyes?"
"Green in Colorado, blue in the New Mexico light."

"So then what kind of Muslim are you?"

"White."

Overall Meaning

The song "Open Dialogue" by Charming Hostess is a conversation between two people who are meeting for the first time. The lyrics may appear to be a simple exchange of questions and answers, but they actually delve deep into the complicated issues of identity, race, and religion. The first question "What are you reading?" introduces the theme of an individual's cultural background and their interests. The next question "Where are you from?" leads to a discussion about nationality and ethnicity. When the first speaker identifies themselves as being from Bosnia, the second speaker jumps to the assumption that there are only Serbs and Croats in Bosnia, but the first speaker corrects them and says there are other ethnic groups as well. The next question about the color of the eyes seems completely irrelevant, but it actually suggests how much an individual's identity is shaped by their environment. The last question "So then what kind of Muslim are you?" highlights the fact that there are many different interpretations of Islam and identity is a multidimensional construct.

Line by Line Meaning

What are you reading?
I am curious to know the literary material that you are currently reading.

Poems by Rumi, a poet born in Afghanistan.
I am currently reading poetic works of Rumi, an Afghan poet.

Where are you from?
I am interested to know your country of origin.

Bosnia.
I am from Bosnia.

Serbs and Croats, right? Is anyone else there?
Are there only Serbs and Croats residing in Bosnia? Or are there any other ethnic groups living there as well?

There are others.
Yes, there are other ethnicities in Bosnia.

What color are your eyes?
I am inquiring about the color of your eyes.

Green in Colorado, blue in the New Mexico light.
The shade of my eye color alters according to the light in different geographical locations.

So then what kind of Muslim are you?
May I know which sect of Muslim faith do you adhere to?

White.
I follow the White sect of Muslim faith.

Lyrics © OBO APRA/AMCOS

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