Black Ox Orkestar – Everything Returns

Constellation

“Everything goes, everything comes back; the wheel of being rolls eternally. Everything dies, everything blossoms again, the year of being runs eternally.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

There is a certain comfort in knowing that everything comes back around, from the morning sunrise to the latest literary tastes and trends. There is also a crushing terror that comes with that realisation. There will be rediscoveries and fresh appraisals, as lost and underappreciated classics are unearthed and placed on a pedestal or faded fads return to see the light of day; but there will also be outbreaks of fascism, mass hysteria, witch trials, and fear and mistrust of outsiders.

The concept of eternal recurrence, which so plagued and haunted Nietszche, is entirely antithetical to the primary pillars of Western civilisation and the art that stems from it. Eternal recurrence negates the idea of free will and the sovereignty of the individual in all its Ayn Rand-ian “glory”. It also calls into question certain myths lionised in Western music, like “authenticity” and “originality”, and their accompanying market logic.

Black Ox Orkestar smash those notions like wedding glasses, seamlessly blending traditional tunes and original compositions while artfully weaving together music from numerous different diasporas.

Everything Returns, the third full-length and first following a fifteen-year hiatus, from Montréal’s Black Ox Orkestar spits in the faces of these fallacies. These nine songs could have come from 1912 or 1862 or 2007, and would have sounded just as fresh and invigorating and moving in each era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFyYHtJXy3A

Things begin with “Tish Ngin,” one of the most traditional-sounding offerings, kicking things off with a particularly timeless, reverential air, with its sawing double bass, ringing piano chords and soaring violin. Nigun are wordless songs sung by Hasidic Jews meant to elevate the spirit to meet G_d. It gives the album a mystical edge that accompanies the Yiddish protest songs.

“Perpetual Peace,” its neighbour, feels like it could’ve been sung at some Socialist organising hall circa 1915. It’s also a nice pick-me-up, as much of the rest of the album veers more towards the contemplative and sombre. You get a little bit of both with “Oysgeforn / Bessarabian Hora”, which is as traditional as it comes with its alternating bass tubas, pirouetting clarinets and hand claps.

Everything Returns reunites the original Black Ox Orkestar lineup of Scott Gilmore, Jessica Moss, Gabriel Levine and Thierry Amar, the double-bassist for A Silver Mt Zion and, of late Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who are augmented by Pierre-Guy Blanchardm, Nadia Moss, Julie Houle, Craig Pedersen and Julie Richard to become a fully-fledged klezmer orchestra.

While A Silver Mt Zion and Godspeed You! Black Emperor have always had elements of folk and traditional music, which are then transformed into fiery maelstroms of distorted guitar, leaden electric bass and churning classical strings, Black Ox Orkestar play traditional klezmer music, straight up — pure, raw and uncut.

Greg Norman‘s engineering has a documentarian, field recording-like quality, giving plenty of space and time to appreciate Gabriel Levine’s warm, breathy bass and alto clarinets and Jessica Moss’s goosebump-inducing violin. This music doesn’t need a gimmick. Any attempt at such might have come across as some William Castle-esque marketing schlock to get some butts in seats, taking away from the very real heart and motivation for Black Ox Orkestar’s re-emergence.

As the liner notes put it: “This is not fusion music, but diaspora music: a cross-cultural call and response of musical lexicons, emerging from the history of Jewish persecution and displacement, the musicology of 19th century repertoire from Jewish shtetls, the improvisational traditions of nusakh in Jewish music and taqsim in Arabic music, and a wider polyglot dialogue of Jewish, Slavic, Arabic, and Central Asian musical traditions. Lyrically and stylistically, Everything Returns connects key current issues — from refugees forced to leave their homes, to the return of fascism and exclusionary nationalism — with the legacy of modernist Yiddish poetry and song.”

It’s so inspiring to hear traditional music presented in a pure, unadulterated form, even if it’s alongside contemporary and original works. It busts the sounds and stories out of folk music’s marginalised position and brings the timeless sounds to breathing, screaming, bleeding, laughing life. This is essential if we have any hope of addressing so many social ills that have been around for waay too long. Otherwise, they’ll keep happening over and over and over again.

-J Simpson-