[Tango-L] The ZVI MIGDAL group

[Jay Rabe]

     If a band has a passionate issue they believe in, and they spend time/money resolving/promoting it, then there's a first-level validity for them to use a name that evokes the issue. But if they pick a name that, while they might recognize and agree in the inappropriateness of the group/issue from which they borrowed the name, if they do nothing else towards the issue, no other involvement, activism, etc., then they are just opportunists, picking a name with shock value just to be remembered and noticed. Every publicist and photo-op manipulator knows the advertising value of scandal. Calling their choice of a name a forget-me-not is a little... sorry Jake, don't have your vocabulary to pick the exact right word here, but it's like conveniently going along with the game, wink wink. 
     In picking such a name, again without any other involvement or activism, the importance of the issue is unavoidably trivialized. Women being kidnapped or otherwise coerced/manipulated into slavery and prostitution is Still, Today, a Huge world-wide problem that hardly gets the press and visibility that it deserves, largely because it has been a part of certain cultures (think Bangkok) for so long that it's accepted, and it's so deeply ingrained in the power/economic structure that it's effectively impossible to eradicate it. 
     In sum, I think they're just using the issue/name opportunistically, for their own notariety, and in the process they're minimizing the shock of it in the repetition, and are doing nothing to foster a continuing attitude of let's-not-forget-the-horror, quite the opposite in fact in the creation of an association of commonness. 
 
           J in Portland
 
Apologies for such an off-topic post.



> Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 13:52:24 -0500> From: spatz at tangoDC.com> To: tango-l at mit.edu> Subject: Re: [Tango-L] The ZVI MIGDAL group> > Okay, Lucia-- spoon by spoon:> > The documentary dealing with the Dixie Chicks and their singer's > political outspokenness is titled "Shut Up and Sing." This title is a > quote of THEIR OPPOSITION's attitude.> > There was a well-known punk band called The Dead Kennedys. The group's > name was a REMINDER, the gesture of that name an aggressive statement of > fact. An _unwillingness_, you might say, to let fact be forgotten, > elegized, paved over. The semantic gesture is rather like the image of > blood (or an unburied body) crying out for vengeance in the Bible.> > Towards the other end of the semantic spectrum, there also was a > well-known group named Nirvana, whose music was almost universally > recognized as the embodiment of angst. I've always taken the name to be > a Foil to the band's music: it hovers over everything like an ideal, > falsified or at least challenged by the reality of the music-- and the > music thereby comes to seem more legitimately "reality," due to the > contrast. This is much like Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti calling his > first book (dealing with metaphysical alienation, loss, WWI) > "L'allegria" ("Joy"). The point is that there is None in the book.> > The notion that a name, or the presentation of a subject, is ipso facto > _an endorsement_ belongs to facile theorists. There is power in the > presentation of a negative. The image of the crucifix is one rather > glaring example. Calling one's band Public Enemy is another.> > Now, I haven't heard Pablo's group, and I don't know Pablo. Judging from > the contents of his recent post, I'd say the name of his group is a > defiance along these very lines. He even comes down hard on the cabeceo > (or a certain way of doing it), linking it to sleaze. If my > understanding of his band's name is off, I'm sure he knows how to say so.> > Last spoon-- if you've eaten it this far: An explanation such as mine is > NOT an endorsement either. Do I like the band name? Eh... a bit obscure, > a bit heavy-handed. But again, I don't know the band. It could very well > be brilliant, but making it so is a tall order. It's certainly > provocative, but the question is what that provocation has to do with > the band's material and its stance within the larger musical context.> > How any of this concerns "acceptable and fun" is beyond me.> > JS> DC> > > Lucia wrote:> >> "Trini y Sean (PATangoS)" <patangos at yahoo.com> escribió:Their name is> >> > > thought-provoking and adds to the event.> > > > > Trini de Pittsburgh> > > > Trini,> > > > I can think of a few other thought-provoking names: The NSDAP Band (that's the Nazi party name), the Ku Klux Klan Band, then a name that will resonate with our British friends, The N9S or a name that will resonate with the Italians, the Mafia group. Or, why not the Nigger Boys and Girls Slave Running Band?> > > > Shall everything be acceptable and fun? Doesn't this attitude cheapen history and memory and makes the horrendous acceptable and more palatable?> > > > Lucia> > > > > >> >> > > > ---------------------------------> > Preguntá. Respondé. Descubrí.> > Todo lo que querías saber, y lo que ni imaginabas,> > está en Yahoo! Respuestas (Beta).> > Probalo ya! > > _______________________________________________> > Tango-L mailing list> > Tango-L at mit.edu> > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l> >> >> >> > > > _______________________________________________> Tango-L mailing list> Tango-L at mit.edu> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
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