Next Year at CBGB's

I have an ongoing fascination with aggressive religious music. I'm very excited to be teaching a course on religion in contemporary music in the fall where I hope I can convince my students that they should investigate the angry believers. Anyway, the New York Times had a piece last month about Hasidic punk rock. Here are a couple snippets that I liked:

Yet he saw no contradiction between his music and his submission to his faith. "To me, Judaism is like punk rock," he said. "Real Judaism is very in your face. The world is chasing after desires for money and sex and drugs and materialism, and Judaism is the opposite. Judaism is like, this world is nothing. This world is only to serve God and bring light and redemption. To me, that’s very punk rock.

...

"I always thought there was something very punk rock about Hasidism. They stood for something. They had a cause. I could care less about politics or animal rights. They stood for real life.”"

Great stuff! I'm thinking there might be an unrecognized connection between Jenn Lena's understanding of music scenes and the way that religious networks work.