garment workers and amharic music

it's things like this, the Cornell Library's acquisition of a whole collection of ILGWU Ladies Garment Workers photos that make me proud to be associated with cornell.
i wonder if my grandma is in any of the photos? i know she wasn't really heavily involved with the union, but maybe at some cultural/social event, after all that had to have been a pretty big part of her life given that she worked all the time and really had no family except her parents and then my mother. and i hear she didn't really have any friends either.
what a sad life for such a bitter woman.
i guess my mom has improved on the family tradition.


i'm currently obsessing over idan raichel's music- two songs from his second cd, out of the depths, are still on the top 10 chart in israel (based on the army radio station, which i found out this summer, my best friend from elementary school worked at- she was like the head of the news desk or something, two years ago, while she was in the army. at least she wasn't shooting arabs.) anyway, idan is fucking brilliant, although after obsessing over him more, (instead of writing my 25 pages worth of papers that are due this week) i found out that there was a bit of controversy over the first album put out by his "project" because he apparently didn't give enough credit to the other musicians that worked with him.

i completely understand the idea of a "project" as different from a band- i guess maybe that's a more common notion in the states than in israel, because people didn't seem to understand it there- or they didn't understand why he called it what he did, and why the same people weren't all involved with the cd and live performances.

basically, he's this white jewish israeli guy in his late twenties who has just made 2 chart-topping amazing albums, of sort of israel fusion music, based mostly on the traditional cultural music of ethiopian jews, some of which were sung in their language, amharic. he also used reggae and some other ethnic styles less common in israel, especially in the second album which was just released in 2005.

he was accused of a sort of cultural appropriation of their music and culture. while i do think it's a bit fucked up that this culture had to be presented by a white ashkenaz man in order for it to become popular, and i am wary of cultural appropriation in general, based on my slightly-more-than-cursory understanding of his music, after having listened to it a zillion times, i don't think that's what he did. he seems to have a genuine respect for presenting other people and their cultures, but i guess, we'll see....to be examined further. comments appreciated. i'm going to try to post an mp3 of his on my cornell server space and link to it here at some pt soon. but in the meantime, there are clips on his website.