Ashamed to Admit
Are you ashamed to admit you're not across the big issues and events affecting Jews in Australia, Israel and around the Jewish world?
In this new podcast from online publication The Jewish Independent, Your Third Cousin Tami Sussman and TJI's Dashiel Lawrence tackle the week's 'Chewiest and Jewiest' topics.
Ashamed to Admit
Wary Serenity: Deborah Conway & Ben Adler on Performing Music Post-October 7
In the middle of the upcoming Jewish High Holy Days, SHIR Australian Jewish Music Festival is returning to stages in Sydney and Melbourne. This year's theme, Songs of Strength, will see Jewish music ranging from musical theatre to pop, liturgical to the latest releases from Israel - including the song that propelled Yuval Raphael to second place at Eurovision, New Day Will Rise.
But behind this celebration lies a more complex story. What does it mean to create music when your very identity has become controversial? In this raw conversation, Australian music icon Deborah Conway and SHIR festival director Ben Adler reveal the personal and professional costs of being Jewish artists in post-October 7th Australia - from cancelled performances and security concerns to the artistic defiance that keeps them creating.
Articles related to this week's episode:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/deborah-conway-in-conversation-with-ramona-koval
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/australian-music-video-goes-viral-in-support-of-israel
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/chutneys-debut-album-is-a-klezmer-tasting-jar
More information about SHIR:
And about Deborah and Ben's music and upcoming shows:
https://www.deborahconway.com/
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Are you curious about what happens when two unapologetic musicians bring their creative genius to one stage?
Speaker 2:In today's episode, we're talking to Deborah Conway and Ben Adler, who are gearing up for this year's Shear concert, a celebration that's as bold and brilliantly Jewish as its line-up.
Speaker 1:Who knows if they'll be ashamed to admit anything. It's season three of this TJR podcast and we seem to be shedding our shame.
Speaker 2:Soon there'll be no shame left.
Speaker 1:Come along for the ride as we slice and dice some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2:Welcome to this week's episode of Ashamed to Admit, as we slice and dice, some seriously chewy and dewy topics. Welcome to this week's episode of A Shame to Admit.
Speaker 1:Hello there, I'm Dash Lawrence from the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 2:And I'm Dash Lawrence's quiz master, tammy Sussman, ready for a bit of triv, dash.
Speaker 1:Sure what you got.
Speaker 2:Okay, fill in the blank. Billy Joel, a Jewish musician, is known for playing at Madison Square Garden many times. Name his most famous song that he performs at these concerts.
Speaker 1:Well, if we're going to keep with the Jewish theme of the show, like it's not Hatikvah.
Speaker 2:No, you're not allowed to look it up. I'll give you a clue. Like he's known for playing this song every single concert, so much so that it's become his nickname. So people, you know, may not say Billy Joel, they'll call him the-.
Speaker 1:The Jew.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, the Piano man.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's like, iconically, billy Joel. What's Jewish about this? This is a Jewish podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, he is Jewish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, but like you need to somehow link it back to Jewish music.
Speaker 2:He's a Jewish person playing music. Don't you think that's enough? Okay, which Jewish artist headlined Coachella 2022 and drew one of her largest festival audiences?
Speaker 1:In 2022.
Speaker 2:2022. Is it A Doja Cat, b Regina Spector, c Deborah Conway or D Mariah Carey?
Speaker 1:Don't think that Mariah Carey is Jewish and I don't think she would be headlining Coachella. I'm going to say Regina Spector.
Speaker 2:No, it's Doja Cat.
Speaker 1:Okay, I don't know who Doja Cat is.
Speaker 2:He's looking her up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, her mother is an American graphic designer of Jewish heritage. Dad is a South African performer of Zulu descent.
Speaker 2:Okay, next question. In 1981, simon and Garfunkel put on a free reunion concert in which park?
Speaker 3:In Central Park.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was easy. How did you guess that one?
Speaker 1:I think I've listened to the album before.
Speaker 2:Final question which female artist holds the record for the largest concert ever, performing for more than 2.5 million people in Rio? Oof.
Speaker 1:Madonna.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Oh who.
Speaker 2:It's Lady Gaga.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who's not Jewish?
Speaker 1:No, but, but could be. Has a great grandmother, that is.
Speaker 2:You reckon? Yeah, I reckon we can find a connection, but my connection is that she shared a college dorm with my ex-sister-in-law, so that's why I included her in this quiz.
Speaker 1:Good, Yep, that's fair.
Speaker 2:Have you noticed a theme with these questions?
Speaker 1:No, no, I don't know where this is all going.
Speaker 2:Well, it's all about massive concerts and performers. It's about huge cultural events.
Speaker 1:Big musical moments.
Speaker 2:And I did mention Deborah Conway, one of today's guests.
Speaker 1:I've seen both of our guests today live, have you Yep? And thoroughly enjoyed hearing both of them. Ben Adler, the festival director of Shear, was really keen to get Deborah Conway to participate in this. The second incarnation of Shear, brought back to life last year with Ben Adler, who is one part of the Sydney Klezmer fusion band Chutney, he was naturally very keen to invite. Really she is royalty Tammy of the Australian music industry. She was named Living Legend by Rolling Stone magazine. Inducted into Music Victoria's Hall of Fame by Rolling Stone magazine. Inducted into Music Victoria's Hall of Fame. Received a Best Female ARIA Award. Nominated for Australian of the Year at one point. She has an AO.
Speaker 2:I think she has an AM.
Speaker 1:Oh, she has an AM.
Speaker 2:What does that mean?
Speaker 1:Let me just check that. I feel like it is an AO. I read AM yeah, she's got an AM.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was right, so there was a pop quiz for me too.
Speaker 1:Is she the biggest deal we've ever had on? A Shame To Admit.
Speaker 2:Deborah Conway is yeah, she's like the big dog of Queens, she's a true mulker. Aishet Khayil, big lehado de energy.
Speaker 1:Look what a privilege it was to have Deborah Conway into the studio.
Speaker 2:Dash. I think our listeners are absolutely going to love today's interview. It was honestly one of my favourites.
Speaker 1:So let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's not waste any more time.
Speaker 1:Ben Adler and Deborah Conway. Ben Adler and Deborah Conway, welcome to the Ashamed to Admit studio.
Speaker 4:Nice to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you, ben. I might start with you. Sheer Madness was Sydney's much-loved Jewish music festival. That ran from 2010 to 2018. And then it went into hiatus for six years and was relaunched last year as Shear. What was the catalyst for bringing the festival back after that hiatus, and interested to find out about how Sydney responded to its return?
Speaker 5:Thanks, dash. So the inspiration, the impetus, was being tapped on the shoulder by Gary Holzman, who cornered me in a Landry Cafe at the end of 2022 and employed exceptional Jewish guilt to convince me that, as a late 20s freelance musician, the one thing I needed in my life was to spend more time doing things for free. Musician, the one thing I needed in my life was to spend more time doing things for free. Essentially, he explained fairly that he'd built this extraordinary phenomenon of the jewish music festival over a decade and it was his time to retire and his teams and it had been in hiatus over covid anyway and he was concerned about succession. So he wanted to find someone who was meshugan enough to to take it up and I basically said yes, on the spot. That was pre-October 7. That was about a year in advance of that.
Speaker 5:So the second impetus really, we spent a year with my small committee of also young and time poor and unrealistic time scheduling people with interests or capacities in music, discussing what a Jewish music festival could be Given. She Madness had kind of dissolved a bit. We had a chance to do something new and we got as far as meeting many times and making no decisions. We didn't really have a clear direction. To be honest, we did a lot of research, we did a lot of soul searching as to what Jewish music was and what a festival could be and what the purpose of a Jewish music festival might entail. We had a vague vision of heading into the inner West. For those of you in Melbourne that's like Fitzroy kind of equivalent, I think, that kind of the cool quote. Unquote drangier hipster areas.
Speaker 2:More alternate 100% alternate.
Speaker 5:And October 7 came along and changed all that, because it became very clear that that particular space was the least welcoming or available to Jewish music or outwardly Jewish music anymore and Deb can talk about that a lot, I'm sure as well. So we decided that we had to do something different and within about a month of October 7, gary also again called me I think he was in Israel at the time and he said you should do something. Gary also again called me I think he was in Israel at the time, and he said you should do something. So we thought you know, maybe we should try rapidly to pull together a kind of flash festival on the grass in Dover Heights, like we've been doing some vigils. I've been organizing the music for the vigils in the immediate aftermath, but that was unrealistic. But it did give us a sense of urgency to do something in response to everything that was happening. So the answer to your question the second major impetus to how Shia became Shia and I'll talk about that as well in Sydney was October 7, and was the need to provide a space in which Jews could congregate that wasn't religious and wasn't political, but that was fiercely, proudly Jewish. And we observed, especially in my role organizing the music in those vigils, that the 10 or 15 minutes of musical moments were the most powerful emotionally and spiritually, and it kind of just seemed like supply and demand. There was this great product and there wasn't a space to enjoy it in any more than 10, 15 minute increments. So we thought let's just extract those and put them in one huge concert and make Jews feel proud again, and that's what we did.
Speaker 5:So yeah, to answer your second question, how did it go down?
Speaker 5:We'd launched a new brand, shear, and we somehow sold out 1,800 and something seats in Sydney Town Hall on October 6th so the night before the anniversary of the massacre and we had Sydney's best and brightest musicians and artists and singers and Simon Tedeschi on piano and we had this extraordinary two and a half hour, like Ben-Hur of a concert with organ.
Speaker 5:It was an extraordinary event that I think we were still getting feedback six, seven months on that. People were thinking about the concert and drawing strength from the concert. Although it was called Songs of Hope, it didn't inspire hope. It also inspired strength and this year we've called our concert Songs of Strength because we think we need that even more perhaps than Hope Now, and it's not purely a reaction to events in the Middle East, of course. It's actually primarily, probably, if anything, in response to what's happening here domestically, and I'm sure, again, debra can talk about that better than me. But the purpose of the concert is inspired by the success of last year's, is to return in big numbers in a place that shows that we belong in Australia and that can prove to us and eventually, hopefully to everyone else, that we're here to stay.
Speaker 2:Debra, there is barely a live music venue in Australia that you haven't played in over your long and incredibly productive performing career. I'm curious to know whether it's different playing music for the Jewish community as opposed to the Australian community in general.
Speaker 4:That's a good question and it's not one that I would have been able to answer until the Sheer Madness Festival of 2010, which is the first time, I believe, that Gary Holzman staged the festival in Sydney, and he invited us, willie and I, to be part of that and we performed a song which we had put on our album Half man, half Woman, called Take Pity on the Beast, and Take Pity on the Beast used lines from the Haggadah and it was a kind of semi-autobiographical piece about members of our family and friends, and then it reverted to the lines of the Haggadah at the end.
Speaker 4:It was a great beast of a song, ravaging around all of this subject matter and taking up to eight minutes of time. I remember getting to the final verses of Take Pity on the Beast and looking out on this all-Jewish crowd and the kids were dancing, because it's kind of a you know, it has this inexorable forward push, this piece, and it was kind of joyous as well and it was the most incredible feeling. I got very choked up knowing that the people who were listening to this song were understanding it in a way that was entirely different to other audiences that I've played it for.
Speaker 4:And other audiences responded. Well, to Take Pity on the Beast, don't get me wrong. But it was just this extra layer of knowing that we were on the same page and understanding the minutiae of what this was about. It was an incredible communal enjoining between performer and audience, and very powerful. It started as thinking and in a couple of years time after that, willie and I had written and had released an album called Stories of Ghosts. We called it our Jewish record. It was reveries around themes from the Old Testament, from the Torah, from an atheist, a non-believer's Jewish perspective not entirely non-believing but, you know, in the sense of a modern perspective that put God in a place that could be understood within the context of the stories.
Speaker 4:I guess, and we performed that also at the Sheer Madness Festival. I mean, that was a record that I was very nervous about putting out. I didn't know how people would take that I didn't. I'd never connected, or neither of us really. Both of us are Jews. Neither of us had connected our Judaism, our essential DNA, our being, with what we did for a living which was more than a living, it's a career, it's a calling.
Speaker 4:I guess as musicians it was an amazingly powerful couple of years of realizing that and putting those two halves of ourselves together and then being public about it, and I'm really glad that we did that. And, of course, these are endlessly nourishing subject matter, to plumb to mine. So we never have a shortage of things to write about and I believe that we have connected with our Jewish audiences on a very profound level that we never had before. I don't know that any Jews. I was really jealous of Tina Arena. Tina Arena, she's got all the Italians. You know that they love her and they want to follow her career, but the Jews had never been interested in me, particularly Then they suddenly got interested and it was a wonderful feeling. It was a wonderful feeling of being appreciated by the people who would understand me best if they thought about it.
Speaker 2:Could it be that they perhaps didn't know that you were Jewish? Well, it's not a very Jewish name. I did not know you were Jewish. Conway to me is not a Jewish name. It's not a Jewish name.
Speaker 4:No, my father changed his. Conway to me is not a Jewish name. It's not a Jewish name. No, my father changed his name when he opened his law practice from Cohen to Conway and he did that before he got married. So they were Mr and Mrs Conway. Also, my father, his family, had come from after the Russian pogroms in the late 1800s, from the Pale of Settlement to England, and their name had been a number of things before Cohen. I think. They were told that they were Coens when they got to England. So it all felt really kind of skin deep.
Speaker 2:You mentioned that that was the first time that you performed to a Jewish audience. Was that just because Sheer Madness was the first opportunity to do so, or had you made a conscious choice that you wanted to be an Australian musician who happened to be Jewish and not a Jewish musician? Was it a branding choice, a conscious decision, or is it just the way your career panned out?
Speaker 4:I'm not sure if it was the first time that I'd ever performed to a Jewish audience. I'm sure there must have been plenty of occasions prior to that where I had been invited to do things and I did them. It's just that this material was so very particularly Jewish Ah right, and so we're Jewish musicians making music very consciously from our own life experience, and that felt different, I guess, and it felt like there was a kind of barrier in some way that in fact never ended up being there. The record was really warmly welcomed by the broader audience and people really loved the record.
Speaker 4:Book of Life became a very you know, I mean, it's hard to say hit, because that's a whole other mysterious realm that I don't think I've been welcomed into since the 1990s. But yeah, people wanted to hear that song. You know it was a very rough time, I guess. We lost an inordinate amount of people in our lives very quickly, some of them timely and others not timely at all, and Stories of Ghosts was a kind of mourning for them and we were writing from a place of deep grief and trying to process all of that through this material.
Speaker 1:Speaking of deep grief a different type of deep grief. Ben, deborah, both of you were fairly public about your response to October 7th. You expressed publicly your solidarity with the people of Israel and the victims on that day, and that decision to be public, to speak publicly as performers, has had significant ramifications on you professionally and personally. Now both of you have very different careers Deborah, you're a veteran of the Australian music industry and Ben, you're still quite early into your career but I'm interested to hear about your shared experiences of disenfranchisement, of boycotting, the impact that it's had on your careers, and also some of the differences as well between what you've experienced since then when October, october 7, happened, we were in the final throes of a pretty big marketing campaign my band, chutney Klezmer Fusion band in Sydney to really make a big push into the non-Jewish in West alternative crowd.
Speaker 5:We had almost sold out one of the major venues in Marrickville and we were just getting final assets out. It was 11th of October was the gig, and so we had a crisis meeting internally and decided there's no way we can do the gig. And then we had to explain why we weren't doing the gig. We'd already spoken to the police in advance and everything. It was kind of out of necessity and the desire to be honest and transparent which then fueled and fed a straighter spine that we ended up coming out, so to speak, as not just Jewish but Zionist. We'd always been Jewish but we'd never really made a point of being Zionist, and I think these days and Deborah may feel similarly the distinction is kind of immaterial at this point. Maybe it always was, but that's certainly how I feel. But I didn't feel at the time, and so it felt like a very big step to take into the unknown, to publish that we stand in support of Israel and in solidarity with our brothers and sisters bleeding, we can't dance in joy. That was, I think, the copy that we used. It wasn't just a matter of necessity, it was a matter of moral rectitude. It didn't feel like we could be integrous Jewish artists without acknowledging the deep gashing wound that we were all feeling and the reason for that wound.
Speaker 5:So, as you've noted correctly, I'm 33. I have no hits under my name. I'm nascent at the very very least. So being out as a Zionist and then being doxxed as one of the top 30 Zionists in that WhatsApp chat or whatever, has done bugger all to me. I don't think I had significant enough non-Jewish following for anyone to know. I do have a non-Jewish ensemble, the Nomad String Quartet. I always wear my hostage ribbon there anyway. I sometimes get some conversations afterwards, but they're all very pleasant, but most people have no idea what's going on and that's not a vehicle for me to use to push any of that, because it's not a Jewish ensemble and we play Vivaldi and Ed Sheeran covers and things like that. So that's a different conversation entirely and I've chosen not to try to put a round peg square hole in that space Within Chutney. And then my other work is almost entirely Jewish. I also direct instrumental music at Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney. I play with Mr Camembert, the Gypsy Band, which is like kind of half Jewish and of course now Shia. So most of the segments of my pie musically were already almost entirely reliant upon mainstream Jewish audiences. So coming out as Zionist was, if anything, just another reason for me to embrace my audience and vice versa.
Speaker 5:I can speak, though, to disenfranchisement for a moment. So we were booked for a festival pre-October 7 to headline the festival. We were headhunted as a Klezmer band and we were told you can have this big moment where all festival attendees will be in the street and you'll be like the main attraction and it'll be a klez fest. And we thought that's amazing, it's a dream. So we're very excited.
Speaker 5:I got a phone call from this festival a couple of weeks after october 7 saying you know, upon reflection we think it would not be appropriate or wise to retain the klez fest and well, maybe we'll find some other musicians to play like the headline event instead. And I I said, oh, why is that? And he said, oh, you know well, given what's going on internationally, it might be offensive to some people. I said, oh, really, who would those people be? Oh well, actually we probably have a lot of pro-Palestinian leaning attendees at our festival. We're a young festival and we don't want to have to go through that and we're all volunteers.
Speaker 5:So I penned a pretty firmly worded letter back to the festival explaining that the logical extension of this position that you articulated is that you are comfortable with the public erasure of Jewish culture in the Australian landscape if we always have to hide ourselves to avoid offending others. And I said if you are comfortable with that, and you would not be comfortable with that for any other minority in their culture and I hate to use the word because I really dislike using it, but that is anti-Semitic, it has to be. They sat with that for a while and there were various figures in that festival that had to discuss internally and then they came back and they said you're right and we were reinstated. So were reinstated. So I was delighted by that outcome and the festival was a runaway success and there were people wearing keffiyehs and some of them bought our album. So you know, some of them dance in the street and I'm not saying that every keffiyeh wearing person is that docile or benign or friendly. But we had a good experience and we were thrilled. That Australian-ness which is meant to be everyone getting along essentially if we could be distilled to a sentence, won the day in that case. So yes, I have had disenfranchisement.
Speaker 5:The thing with disenfranchisement, which I think Deborah can also speak to, is that it's pretty rare that that situation emerges where someone tells you directly this is why you've lost the opportunity. There's usually a sly, deceitful, mendacious approach which is offloading responsibility, culpability to some kind of other excuse like logistics or security or something that shifts the blame away from we just don't want Jews, and sometimes we don't even get any feedback whatsoever. So, for example, my band Chutney. We applied for grants across all three levels of government nonstop for three years to try to fund our debut album. We rejected every time by Australia Council at the time, as it was now Creative Australia. We were told that our application was in the lowest, third or lowest quartile perhaps, and it was so bad there was no comments that could be made to improve it because I asked how can we improve for the next grant application round? The album since then has gone on to win three gold medals at the Global Music Awards in San Diego and we've been nominated for two categories in the Hollywood Independent Music Awards. It's like it's a big deal, it's a big album, it's done well internationally.
Speaker 5:So what I'm trying to say is most of the disinformation that I think I've probably experienced has been quiet and silent, no-transcript.
Speaker 5:Obviously it's the bread and butter of being an artist. But most artists don't have to think was I rejected because I'm Jewish? Most artists can think of a bevy of other excuses. You know I didn't fit other demographic criteria, or it wasn't good enough, or they had this last year. There's a million mind games that can operate. But we have an additional element as Jewish artists, especially since October 7, but possibly also before Some of my applications were before October 7, actually which is did they reject us because we're Jewish? That element of doubt. I'm not trying to create a victimhood mentality here. I obviously decry and eschew that very strongly. But I think it's just to articulate where a lot of the additional challenge of being a Jewish artist and how this enfranchisement operates. Currently it's very rarely out in the open, it's often daggers in the night, under cloak, and that level of uncertainty and doubt that can never be resolved is an additional burden on the Jewish artist in Australia.
Speaker 1:What about you, deborah? Has it been daggers in the night, or has it been?
Speaker 4:Oh, it's been all fun for me. Roses and accolades.
Speaker 1:It's been a little more upfront, hasn't it?
Speaker 4:It's been tricky. I've had shows cancelled, and some for the most specious reasons. So I put a book out just before October 7 7th. I'd written it during covid. It's called. Here we go just happen to have a copy here. It's called book of life for your readers. Um won the nib award actually the people's choice nib award which was nice, thank you and so that we were doing a show based on this book on October 7th we were actually in our matinee performance when Willie heard from our youngest daughter, who was living in Tel Aviv at the time, to say don't worry, I'm sheltering in the stairwell, everything's fine. So that's how we found out about it.
Speaker 4:Since then, there was a number of writers' festivals that I had been booked into by my publisher, which was Alan and Unwin. The Perth Writers' Festival, writing WA, had to hire security and rearrange their entire writers' roster in order to balance my perceived support or my perceived political views. This is not a political book and I wasn't there to talk about politics, but they felt compelled to do that. That's fine. The Newcastle Writers Festival also hired a flotilla of security plainclothes police. It was an extraordinary display. There was another festival called Word on the Waves, who told me that all of a sudden their CEO became very unwell and couldn't do the opening night, which was the thing that I had been booked for, although, strangely, the opening night went ahead anyway, but just not with me. There was the Byron Bay Writers Festival that had me originally scheduled for the August event and then turned around to cancel me and then put me on at another outside event, outside of festival event, and then cancelled that too. Theatres walked away, promoters walked away because they were being harassed by pro-Palestinian activists working the phones, sending letters, emails, you know, demanding that my support for genocide rendered me unfit to be put on a stage in front of people. And how dare they. And that made them complicit. Other promoters stood by us and you know, kudos to them.
Speaker 4:There were other events that were targeted by the activists, and police had to turn out and prevent them from breaking into the building. They were, you know, banging on the glass to get in. Prevent them from breaking into the building. They were banging on the glass to get in, and this culminated in an event in Hobart at the Theatre Royal, where we had sold every ticket, except what we weren't aware of was that four of those tickets were sold to activists. So they had arranged a protest outside where they handed out leaflets detailing my villainy leaflets detailing my villainy and then inside they staged protests at staggered intervals Because the show that we were doing was scripted and not just a straight music show. They could create the kind of maximum amount of disruption by scheduling their protests every 15 to 20 minutes, which they did four times.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was a kind of terrible, terrible insight into societal breakdown. At the last, you know, another person stood up in the front and screamed at me that I should be ashamed and disgusted, et cetera, et cetera. We left the stage, as we had planned to do. The lights went up, they were going to escort her out, and then a fan in the front row who'd bought tickets some time ago and was excited, I guess, to see us and our show had, lost her temper and broke a glass and threatened the protester which was a shocking, shocking state of affairs, a terrible decision on her part and she faced court. The protesters never even got their names taken. It was really dreadful, and the Tasmanian promoter appears to have developed PTSD every time my name is mentioned. So we don't go to Tasmania during this tour. We have just released a new album. I've got the cover of that too.
Speaker 2:Congratulations, muzzle Toff, bring it out, here we go. Can you see that oh?
Speaker 5:yes.
Speaker 2:Brilliant.
Speaker 4:It's called Right Wing Propaganda. We'll just own it first, eh, shall we? It's what the protesters like to say Zionist propaganda. So there's been incidents in trying to organise this tour as well venues that have gone on sale and had to pull the sales, you know, 24 hours later, because they've been inundated with protests. You know protesting emails, letters, phone calls, whatever, and then other people who have also received that but told them to. You know, fuck off. You know, don't be wankers.
Speaker 4:This is a site for music and art and not politics. And if you don't like it, go to hell, go away. And you know, those are the people, those are the venues that are great. They set a fantastic example. They stand strong. And those are the people. Those are the venues that are great. They set a fantastic example. They stand strong and we are not just grateful, we are well, it's such a wonderful example to set. If you don't want to be bullied, don't be bullied. So this will go on.
Speaker 4:We've done our first two shows. We were not harassed at all, and one of them was in the hotbed of anti-Jewish sentiment, which is the Sydney suburb of Marrickville. The last few times I've played at this club, on the wall outside in very, very large letters, 10 foot high. It says things like D Conway Zionist stooge for all of everybody to see. So I get there for sound check and the owner or the manager opens up the door. He says, oh, I didn't even have to post to this one. Bless his cotton socks, you know. And the shows are sold out and people love them and you know, as I said earlier, these are not political shows. We don't do that. The album I guess this particular album is definitely influenced by the turbulent times we have been living in this first half of this last decade.
Speaker 2:So did you consider calling the album Zionist Stooge?
Speaker 4:I think that might have come up at some point.
Speaker 2:yes, Okay, and despite the name of the album, would you say it's an apolitical?
Speaker 4:Oh, I mean, I think people would have to make up their minds for themselves. We've never been people to proselytize about anything. I think that the creative process remains at its strongest, at its most powerful when you are presenting a series of ideas, but allowing people to interpret those ideas as they will, as opposed to prescribing them. So I would like people to listen to it and make up their own minds. But uh, it's an. It's a good record in the sense that we've done something very different to what we've ever done before, which is willie and I just playing on our own.
Speaker 4:There's no drums or bass on this one, which makes us very we've anti-Semitic, proofed it in a sense there's not going to be anybody who refuses to play with us because of that, except for our daughters, who are on the record, but they're very happy to play with us.
Speaker 2:And will attendees at Shear 2025 be able to hear some of the songs on that?
Speaker 4:album. We're not playing some of the songs on that album. I don't believe we are playing any of the songs from Right Wing Propaganda at the Shear Festival, but there are shows in Sydney and Melbourne and everywhere else you get to, because the national tour has only just begun. So if people want to listen to that, they can check out our website, which is deborahconwaycom. The songs of strength for Sheia will be a different approach. We've written many songs which Ben has selected from our back catalogue of things that he wants to put his band as a backdrop to us, and that's great. That's always really an interesting exercise. I think people will be entertained and I think I'm going to be singing in Hebrew, so that'll be a good test.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Well, deborah and Willie will be headlining Shear this year, but they're not the only ones that have made their way onto the program Ben Goldstein, daniel Bavley, brett Kaye, montana, sharp, sharp, amit benita we've got a couple of other names in there and, of course, your own band, chutney, as well. Ben, give us some idea of what attendees can look forward to seeing at this year's festival, which is making its way from sydney down to melbourne for the first time yeah, so it's.
Speaker 5:It is essentially the festival word we've retained from our predecessor. There isn't quite the right word in English, or maybe any language for that matter, to describe what we're doing. It's a concert, but it's much, much, much more than a concert. So essentially it's a gala concert with the stylistic variety that you would hope to experience at a particularly diverse festival, actually. So we have music ranging from traditional, slash, classical, adjacent instrumental music through to the absolute most recent hits out of Israel, via musical theatre from the mid-20th century, including some mainstream pop hits that I won't tell you exactly, but they're surprising because they have Jewish authorship, like as an English pop top 40s. We have folk-inspired arrangements. We obviously have incredible originals from Deborah and Willie.
Speaker 5:Yes, I have gone through their back catalogs. There are certain songs that I've found deeply resonant, including Book of Life. It's a wildly variegated musical and emotional experience. And just to add a couple more names. So we have Sasha Fisher singing, also down from Sydney, and we have Daniel Bettlinger, who is a Sydney-born but now Berlin-based violin virtuoso as well, some ones from Tel Aviv, ones from New York. We have Sydney and Melbourne, even split. We have people in their 20s. We have other decades of their life. We have a wide, wide gamut in every possible way and you can't be everything for everyone, but I do think we get pretty close and that's not because we're desperately trying to appeal to everyone. I just think that this is what Jewish music is and I'm deeply proud of every single song and every single artist and the chance to platform them.
Speaker 1:Well, I was going to ask you, ben, besides, obviously, the breadth and the diversity, is there something, as the festival director, that you've looked for from each of these people or groups that you've curated?
Speaker 5:Yes, the answer is artists who move me. It's as simple as that. If I am moved emotionally, in my experience over the past 15 years of professional musicianship, I have learned that chances are other people will be moved as well, and that's basically my criterion. I mean Debra being the leader of Jewish artists in this country and the person with Willie who brought she Madness down a decade ago to Melbourne. There are many other extra musical reasons why she needed to be with us, and Deborah and Willie move me, and then the songs that I've chosen in particular deeply move me, probably cry on stage. So yeah, it's a very simple answer.
Speaker 1:Ben, can I just salute you for the choice of where you're going to be holding Shear. So you've chosen two prominent venues in Melbourne and Sydney in the CBDs. Now, given the age that we're living in, I could well understand if you had chosen to have these concerts, this festival, closer to the Jewish community. But I read this and I'm not sure if that was the intention, but very much as a bold statement that we are here, we have a right to perform in these spaces and we are going to be right in the centre of Melbourne and Sydney. Am I reading too much into it or was that part of the motivation?
Speaker 5:That is 100% the correct reading. We made a very early strategic decision at Shear to never play in a Städel-like venue, be that a high school hall or shul Nothing wrong with shuls. I do a lot of my work in those spaces, but this is different. The whole point of Shia is to create the platform in the most elite spaces, venues, stages in the country to make a point that we belong there, and there's a whole bunch of symbolism attached. I'm happy to speak about Sydney. So Sydney, we played at Sydney Town Hall last year.
Speaker 5:Town Hall steps are the steps where our antagonists gathered weekly every Sunday and we played there on a Sunday and we had police and security and CSG, because that was the Sunday. A year later, after October 7, there was a particularly large pro-Palestinian rally planned that day and we booked in first. We paid our multi tens of thousands of dollar deposit. There was no way I was moving or even moving. There was a request to make us enter by either side, having to apologize to enter our own space that we paid for. I refused flatly. I said no, we're walking up the main steps, the symbolic steps of the heart of our city. So the police they took the Palestinian activists to court and moved them 400 meters down the road. This is what happens if we have the chutzpah to stand firm.
Speaker 5:I think a lot of leadership, I must say, in this space in the Jewish community, typically sometimes favors the non-confrontational approach in the interest of risk mitigation or minimization or elimination. Everything is risky. Getting out of bed is risky. Driving a car is risky. Eating food you didn't prepare is risky. Risk is everywhere. The whole point of life is to mitigate risk if the reward is worthy and I think the reward is so worthy. I can speak about this.
Speaker 5:In Sydney Last year people were also scared about attending the CBD, so we chose after a week to abort our approach of marketing where the venue was and we just kept it vague. This year we've been loud and proud. Not a single complaint. Not a single community member has called up in distress saying how can you advertise this? There's been no comments. We're almost 60% sold.
Speaker 5:I really believe, among other factors, that that night changed the communal psyche, the psyche of 40,000 people, and that is my intention in Melbourne. We can't say where we'll be in Melbourne, but it won't be at a synagogue. I can say that and I urge Melbourneites to recognize the urgency of their situation, of your situation, where there is a discomfort leaving the bagel belt. This is not okay and it doesn't have to be that way. And we do have support. I've had site visits and I've had detailed meetings with security and Vic police. We have the head of security of the entire city very, very much on our side, very much looking after us, and it is possible to do with a little bit of chutzpah and a little bit of hardyaka.
Speaker 2:Deborah, you strike me as the kind of person who doesn't give a fuck anymore. Is that right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, what do they say? I have no more fucks to give, isn't that the line? Well, you know, the thing is, this is kind of it's the new normal, having to weather the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and it has been pretty constant, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, that you're just in whole new territory than what you were pre-October 7th, and I mean, whether that be attacks on the broader community or attacks on me, attacks on places of worship or places that we eat, or school kids, or it's all become an outrage. And so you know you have to kind of adopt a certain wary serenity. Perhaps Is that what it is.
Speaker 2:That's the name of your next song, Because the name of this podcast is Ashamed to Admit, and I usually ask our interviewees if there's anything they're ashamed to admit. But I feel like for you. Maybe I should just be asking you what you're proud to admit or your personal song of strength.
Speaker 4:I have always been proud to admit that I'm a Jew, that I'm a Zionist, that my parents are Jews, that my grandparents were Jews, that my children are Jews, that my husband is a Jew I'm a Zionist, that my parents are Jews, that my grandparents were Jews, that my children are Jews, that my husband is a Jew, I'm a Jew man and I don't have a problem with resigning. I have no problem with admitting to that, and if you want to know about a shame to admit, I would suggest that people read this book. I'm not ashamed to admit anything.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Deborah and Ben, for joining us today. You've been absolute treats. Thank you, Tammy.
Speaker 4:Thank you, Dave.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2:That was Ben Adler and Deborah Conway ahead of Shear, and that's it for this week. We'll leave you with Book of Life by Deborah Conway and Willie Ziger. You've been listening to A Shame to Admit with Dashiell Lawrence from TJI and me, tammy Sussman. This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King, with theme music by Donovan Jenks, as always. Thanks for your support and look out for us again next week.
Speaker 3:Blow the horn. Blow the horn. Give a voice to all the mournful souls who search to be reborn tonight. Forgive us like the sharpest knife, oh God. Inscribe me in the book of life. I've been hungry since before the dawn. Since before the dawn, everybody's empty, but it's not for food. And everybody's praying here to be rescued, examining our sins, it's hard not to conclude. We're screwed. The world's in flames, these maddened days of black and white, no shades of grey to keep at bay the darkest night. There's never been a summer that could save a life. Blow the horn. Blow the horn. Give a voice to all the mournful souls who search to be reborn tonight, thank you. Tired and full of uncried tears, I still can't shed Start up with the unsaid things. We never said you wanted forgiveness, I wasn't ready yet. Now you're dead. Now you're dead. To all the souls who lost themselves, I sing for you. Apart from that, there's nothing more that I can do and though I know it's useless, it kind of helps me through. Blow the horn. Blow the horn. Give a voice to all the mournful souls who search to be reborn tonight. Forgive us like the sharpest knife, oh God. Inscribe me in the book of life.
Speaker 3:I've been hungry since before the dawn. We are now at Upper Session Road. I want to see my children out in the world, grown into women from little girls. Why wouldn't you want that too? The older you get, the more friends you lose. Next year I won't disappear and fire or flood. Next year I'll still be here To do some good. I won't be taken by pills or thrills or wine when I should be doing fine. Blow the horn. Blow the horn. Give a voice to all the mournful souls who search you. Be reborn tonight. Forgiveness like the sharpest knife. Oh God, inscribe me in the book of life. I've been hungry since before the dawn. I've been hungry since before the dawn.