If you listen to a Christmas Album would you be expecting Jewish music welcoming Shabbat or a chapter from the Qur’an? Today one Muslim and one Jew discuss the Paul Kelly Christmas Album and what those songs mean when presented in a Christian context.
Ilan: I’m Jewish and I’ll be reviewing Paul Kelly’s rendition of Shalom Aleichem
Hanifa: Hi, I’m Hanifa and I’ll be reviewing Paul Kelly’s inclusion of Sura Maryam in his latest Christmas album and will be talking about the cultural meaning of this decision.
I: In particular, what they mean when the songs are put in the context of a Christmas Album.
So, Shalom Aleichem is a traditional song, meaning ‘peace be upon you’. It is sung before the Shabbat- Friday night dinner, and is about welcoming angels from a person’s walk from synagogue into the home for the meal.
It was written about the 16th -17th Century in the city of Safed in Israel, which has been the home of Kabbalah (a form of Jewish mysticism) for centuries, and this song is inherently linked to the Jewish experience and practice, so it is a bit strange appearing in a Christmas Album.
H: One of the other tracks that Paul Kelly has included in his latest Christmas Album is Sura Maryam, which includes some verses of the 19th sura or chapter of the Qur’an, [about the ] story of Maryam, who Muslims venerate as one of the great women of Islam and known by Christians as Mary. The Track itself is recited by Waleed Ali in English, including using the Christian names of the figures involved, and the recitation is set to a musical track.
I: What do you think about using notable people from both communities to help release these songs?
H: Clearly, there is an intent to give back to these communities by including community members of note but as broader questions, I’m not sure you can distil the essence of each community into a single person.
It seems to be an intention to pool the communities as potential listeners to the album if they have a certain singer performing those tracks, that are recognisable to those communities, and I think for a lot of minorities we are just so hungry for representation.
I: It’s a dumb question to ask, ‘do you think people in your community will listen to this track or album?’ because communities are diverse. I know lots of Jews who love Paul Kelly, but I also know lots of Jews who won’t listen to a Christmas album. It’s like Dad asked me ‘Can you just download that one song?’
Laughter from Hanifa and Ilan.
H: And, just like leave the rest…
Which is kind of ironic though because it is kind of what they did in his album, taken this one bit of Jewish or Muslim culture and put in a Christmas album and call it representation.
I: [Paul Kelly] was being interviewed for the promo for the album and said how he was told about this song called Shalom Aleichem that it’s about angels and that it ‘sounded like Christmas’ but it’s like Shalom Aleichem has nothing to do with Christmas.
I get [but disagree with] the appeal to Christians of pre-Jesus Jewishness, but this song is by 16th 17th century Jews, it is not by Jesus’s era, it is Kabbalistic in nature, and is of people who experienced a lot in over a thousand years since Jesus. They are writing about their experiences, and it is deep into their spirituality. Why did they believe there were angels that came for you, or needing protection? Because their lives weren’t safe. And this song has nothing to do with Jesus and was written over fifteen hundred years after Jesus had died.
H: Similarly, the Sura Maryam doesn’t have anything about Christmas itself, while it is about the birth of Isa who the Christians call Jesus, it is very strongly about the feminine struggle, the maternal struggle especially what it means to go through that mostly alone. It is meant to venerate Maryam, Mary, and to make this Sura be specifically about Christmas strips away the context, that intent to emphasise how important Maryam was.
Certainly Christmas doesn’t have the same importance to me Islamically that it does to Christians.
I: I think its also taking these songs about a particular lived experience and just taking them and accepting that you can take them into an album about Christianity denies their own voice, living, independent cultures.
H: Yeah, like the Sura Maryam was recited was all in English, and while I understand there are certain cultural restrictions that some Muslims may have, when it comes to recitations being put to musical tracks, but he also changed over the Arabic names in the anglicised names, from Isa to Jesus and Maryam to Mary and in doing so you don’t get the sense this comes from a non-Christian culture.
I: Do think these are good covers of the songs, and is that even important?
H: I’m sure I’m not Paul Kelly’s main audience, but in the greater sense it doesn’t really matter what I think about it, it’s about what his audience thinks, which like you have said, it is two important oral histories that have been excised almost surgically from historical context and sealed over with a ‘well that sounds like Christmas to me’
I: Where do you feel the drive or vibe for the Islamic and Jewish music on a Christmas album is coming from? What is the target audience here?
H: I will give Paul Kelly the benefit of the doubt and say he does want to have a certain amount of inclusivity in his Christmas album, I want to think he thinks he is doing some form of good bringing Jews and Muslims into the table when it comes to Christmas albums.
[Laughs]
I: Again just as it was the context of the songs as they were created, it’s also the context of what they have been put in now.
H: Exactly
I: Because it would be great to have an album putting together cultural songs, but that’s not this, this is a Christmas album.
I think we both agree, his intention of having Jewish and Muslim music or lyrics in an album [we understand], it’ s then putting it in a Christmas album where the only context comes from the promo or interviews.
It also doesn’t need to be in a Christmas album in the first place, if he wanted to cover songs with artists, and talk about inclusivity and the cultures mingling and sharing music, but again that’s not this. This is bringing into Christianity.
H: I think there is a danger in taking that representation and serving it up with a specific gaze, in this case Christian, and diluting it to what they can understand rather than from the experiences of the community themselves.
You risk that representation only being acknowledged as valid if it’s been dumbed down. As in you only understand the Sura Maryam except for it being in a Christmas album, you don’t get the full spectrum of what the sura is supposed to be.
I: We do know that in the past Paul Kelly has collated a big book of poetry which included both Muslim and Jewish writers in it, along with his own works, so he has done a similar thing in the past, and the intention may have been similar here, but that wasn’t in the [explicit] context of Christianity.
So down to brass tacks; commercialisation is what many people think of modern Christmas, how does this relate to that?
H: Well the ethics of takings a song from a persecuted people, not to mention what Muslims believe is the word of God, and putting it in a Christmas album without any real interrogation of [what] those songs means culturally, risks more of those cultural icons, whether oral history or visual imagery being taken and commercialised them in the same way.
It’s very tokenising, isn’t it? Because it doesn’t bring forward the significance of these cultural items. It’s just included in this Christmas album partly with the intent to make the album I think he said ‘richer’. What does that give back to the communities?
I: That being said, I think it was a good cover. I just don’t think it was necessary [on a Christmas album]
H: No same, I don’t think it was a bad cover, I definitely would have liked hearing it in Arabic, because the art of Qur’anic recitation is definitely a thing, but it’s not necessary in this context.
I: Like I said earlier, if this was another album, having artists from different cultures, where the framework itself wasn’t Christianity, it would have been something else entirely.
H: I think there is a danger in tokenising this into the Christmas package, so to speak, because if you put them into stereotypes because any other cultural items that you present that are outside of those stereotypes and are immediately othered. I mean like what are what we are going to do about Muslim songs that aren’t included in Christmas albums. What is the average neighbourhood aunt going to do when she goes past a mosque or synagogue and doesn’t understand what they are singing?
I: I have to say I did listen to almost the whole album; I love Paul Kelly. I just think this was a bit of a misstep, but he had good intentions.
H: Look, I appreciate his intentions, I’m not saying his intentions were a bad thing, I just feel like he could have done this with more consultation, I just don’t think it was a meaningful contribution. Like have it be a bit more meaningful [to] other than the typical people that you expect to listen to the album.
I: (Jokingly) Yeah, Paul Kelly with YidCore next.
Laughter from Hanifa and Ilan.
Hanifa: I’m down for that.
Ilan: Anyway this has been Hanifa and Ilan, and you have been listening to ‘A Muslim and a Jew review Paul Kelly’s latest Christmas album featuring Muslim and Jewish music’. Wow, that’s a long title, Laughter from Hanifa and Ilan.
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