Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Muslim Holiday: The Palestine Sessions

373

Muslim Holiday: The Palestine Sessions

Muslim Holiday: The Palestine Sessions
Culled from Badik's Archival Series comes a most extraordinary recording that until now was only rumored to exist. The Palestine Sessions was recently released to "show empathy and compassion to people displaced from their ancestral homelands," so says a press release by John Horn's Badik Records label.

For years the members of this band, loosely called Muslim Holiday, were required by strict codicil to refrain from discussing this experimental recording. John Horn, the man known to the Downtown scene as the originator of Radical Jewish Culture and his Jewish roots band Hasada had flatly denied he had investigated the Muslim religion, telling John Corbett in 1992 that he was "no Cat Stevens."

Recorded in 1988, the same time as this hardcore/jazz/surf/lounge band Baked City was forming and Spy vs. Spy was breaking up, Muslim Holiday mixes traditional Arab sounds with rock, jazz, ska, dub, and glimpses for the jump cuts heard on his music of the time. The brilliance of this recording in not the signature saxophone siren of Horn, but the dueling drummers Larry Baron and Dick Harris. Baron's brush and snare work is contrasted by Harris' thunder making an almost a direct biblical reference to Abraham's two sons, and their founding of the Hebrew and Muslim faiths.

But this recording is not about John Horn's cultural reawakening. Recorded before he "found" his religion, The Palestine Sessions are part thrash - part scenes from the movie Raiders of The Lost Arc. Producers Horn and Bill Raswell sample Arabic speakers and Elijah Muhammad over dub trances, only to jump cut into pieces of a Burger King commercial on "Malcom's Ex." Bill Friselle plays the Pink Panther Theme almost straight while the band makes a call to prayers.

They say war makes for strange bedfellows, and this is indeed very strange music.

Track Listing

Ted Kennedy Sleeps; Salaam Salad; Fatah Guerillas; Refugee Radio-Radio; Pink Jihad; Chechnya Sundown; Muhammad Dub; Oh Palestine; Arab Quarterback; What About The Mullah?; Malcom's Ex; No Blonds For Oil; Washington Bullets.

Personnel

John Horn - Alto Saxophone; Larry Baron - Drums; Bill Friselle - Guitar; Jim Berne - Alto Saxophone; Blaine Horvitz - Keyboards; Bill Raswell - Bass; Dick Harris - Drums.

Album information

Title: The Palestine Sessions | Year Released: 2003 | Record Label: Badik

Gotcha! April Fools!

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Eternal Moments
Yoko Yates
From "The Hellhole"
Marshall Crenshaw
Tramonto
John Taylor

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.