Something Jewish: Interview with Baron Cohen
Submitted by admin on Wed, 2009-08-05 14:32
Article Date:
Fri, 2007-07-20
Musician Erran Baron Cohen the brother of Borat and Ali G creator Sacha made a name for himself a few years ago with the band Zohar, who fuse cantorial chants and other ethnic music with dance beats. Caroline Westbrook talks to him about his involvement in the Sacred exhibition at London's British Library, as well as his famous sibling and his work with the Kazakhstan orchestra.
How did you get involved in the Sacred exhibition?
Well Zohar my band fuses Jewish and Arabic dance music and taking it to the clubs, so I'm not quite sure exactly how it came through but it's quite nice to be involved in it, it's quite a good setting for us.
What do you think of it?
Well it brings Jewish and Arab culture together, I know they've been doing a whole programme and I'm not sure what other stuff they've been doing, but it's nice obviously and important to have this kind of thing. Part of my music highlights the similarity between Jewish and Arabic music, and culturally we're cousins. Unfortunately there's a lot of antagonism and hate and that's a great pity, so it's nice to have an evening where you have these things coming together in a positive way. The Jewish community in this country is quite narrow minded and probably totally ignorant to be honest of how many similarities there are between the people, so anything that will bring the two together is a positive thing in the weird times we're living in.
How did the band come about in the first place and what are you guys up to?
Well immediately before this we're touring the US,playing New York, Chicago, San Francisco and LA. The Sacred thing is a DJ set with percussion but the whole band is going out to America where the album isout. The band came about from me a long long time ago messing about with Jewish cantorial stuff with beats. On the last album we used a lot of samples of very old records of dead people singing very nicely and bringing it into the future in some ways, but this new album is much less sample based, we've worked with some amazing singers.
Are you looking forward to Kazakhstan orchestra?
Well funnily enough I was conducting them in Abbey Road last week which was an amazing experience. But I've written a symphonic work for them and it was performed in May at St James' in Piccadilly. It was an amazing evening and it will be released by Sony BMG probably next year it was a bizarre project but an amazing one.
