Gypsy, Cumbia, Cuarteto, Surf, Blah Blah Blah: Simja Dujov and Jewish Musical Eclecticism in Argentina
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CHAPTER 11 Gypsy, Cumbia, Cuarteto, Surf, Blah Blah Blah: Simja Dujov and Jewish Musical Eclecticism in Argentina Lillian M. Wohl “Hailing from the land of Tango in Buenos Aires,” writes Adam J. Sacks for The Jewish Daily Forward, “Simja Dujov writes music that resembles almost anything other than that classic genre.”1 Dujov, whose given name is Gabriel Dujovne, confirms Sacks’ assessment of his music, stating on the label of his 2012 album, Santificarás la Fiesta (You will sanctify the party): “This is real latin cumbia, Balkan gipsy klezmer, blah blah blah from Argentina to the World, yes it is.”2 Dujov’s approach to contemporary Jewish musical innovation is eclectic and shows a deep awareness of the structures of genre and the clas- sificatory impulses of the world music markets. While embracing the cosmo- politan migrations of Latin Alternative musics circulating throughout the Americas, Dujov emplaces Jewish sound in the greater panorama of the Latin American musical experience. In this essay, I discuss the eclectic style and multiple musical projects of Jewish Argentine musician and DJ Simja Dujov, whose work both within and beyond the colectividad judía (Jewish commu- nity) locates Jewish sound and Jewish Argentines within a broader matrix of urban activities and musical projects renewing the Jewish cultural imaginary throughout the Americas. In Argentina’s most populous region and its cultur- ally, politically, and economically influential capital city of Buenos Aires, musi- cians such as Simja Dujov are working to expand the sound worlds of Jewish music beyond the echoes of klezmer revival (with its roots in North America 1 Adam J. Sacks, “Music of the Mind: A ‘Happy Soul’ in Argentina Blends Sounds of the World,” Jewish Daily Forward [New York], April 29, 2009, Fast Forward. Web (accessed June 13, 2013). 2 Cumbia has become a widely recognized popular music genre in Argentina since the 1990s, arriving from Colombia and localized by musicians who added electronic instruments that now define the cumbia villera sound in Buenos Aires. For more on cumbia in Argentina, see Pablo Vila, and Pablo Semán, Troubling Gender: Youth and Cumbia in Argentina’s Music Scene (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 1–23; Héctor D. Fernández L’Hoeste, and Pablo Vila, Cumbia: Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 1–27. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004�04775_0�3 172 Wohl in the late 1980s), while extending Argentine music beyond tango for global audiences. At once consciously representing a Jewish aesthetic in a wider sea of mostly non-Jewish music played and performed late-night in Buenos Aires, Simja Dujov has spent the past few years making a name for himself across various interrelated music scenes. Working as a DJ, singer, and multi-instrumentalist, Dujov champions a new authenticity for Jewish sound, one undergirded by Latin America’s popu- lar musical styles, which he mixes with the East European folk melodies and rhythms of his family’s Ashkenazic Jewish roots. With an eye and ear toward youth audiences, Simja Dujov (which means “happy soul” from the Hebrew and Russian, respectively) positions Jewish music within global music mar- kets, spotlighting Jewish musical work in Argentina. Although his musical approach attaches positive associations to the concept of eclecticism in order to subvert existing genre categories and to make his music comprehensible to local and global listeners, Dujov’s endeavors to affirm a singular aesthetic showcase the tension between practices of musical appropriation and musical innovation—questions of Jewish musical authenticity tied to a much longer history of Jewish embodiment encounter, and cultural exchange in the passage through modernity.3 While his work remains hemispheric in scope, the Buenos Aires resident and Córdoba native’s everyday musical labors composing, sing- ing, performing, producing, and sharing Jewish Argentine music raise impor- tant questions about cultural citizenship, musical diversity in Latin America, and Jewish musical innovation in Buenos Aires. In 2005, Dujov’s music reaches diverse audiences and listening publics, who sometimes register the sound as Jewish but more often simply respond to his ability to heighten their enjoyment of a particular event. He often col- laborates with well-known DJs, private organizations, community institu- tions, and municipal cultural programming initiatives within and beyond the Jewish community of Buenos Aires, performing regularly in clubs, bars, and nightclubs. For Dujov, performing throughout the Americas involves a flexible marketing strategy, which is at times as confusing in its eclecticism as it is sug- gestive for concealing and conflating the social histories attached to particular traditions in the pursuit for musical innovation in Argentina. By providing meaning for Jewish Latin American music by reflecting ontolo- gies of Latin popular music, Dujov’s aesthetic stance brings attention to the role of music in the making of Jewish Argentine identity. Based on ethno- graphic fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2014, I discuss Dujov’s eclectic 3 See Philip V. Bohlman, Jewish Music and Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), xvii..