Coco Bryce and Rave Report: Jewish Junglists
Hey! Rave Report here in December 2023. Our interview was written months before the conflict escalated in October. Our views have evolved and would require a new article, which I’m not ready to write.
I've since learned more deeply about the systematic oppression and murder of the Palestinian people. I’ve been on a process of unlearning lifelong indoctrination, having growing up in a religious household with personal connections to Israel. I've also experienced and witnessed more antisemitism than ever. As a Jew, I can tell you that the way it's affected/divided/silenced Jewish families and generations more than ever before is beyond heart breaking. Being Jewish is the most confusing it's ever been.
In this interview, which I wrote up in the summer, Jungle legend Coco Bryce and I share how we use our art to celebrate and express our culture, and our experiences of antisemitism. Coco Bryce doesn't use social media but is happy for this to be re-shared. Sending love and humanity to you all!
Rave Report is for the culture - but what about my own?
Since starting out in 2019, Rave Report has always been about creating new narratives and challenging stereotypes about cultures around the world. I do that by shining a light on DIY underground music communities.
But why haven’t I reported much on my own culture? I come from Jewish heritage. My mum wasn’t ever super strict with me, but she does keep kosher, and I did grow up going to synagogue and celebrating Shabbat.
The two pieces of content I posted in the past about Jewish culture and underground music made me feel nervous to share. One interview with my friend, an Israeli psytrance raver about secret desert raves in 2019, and another in 2022 where I spoke out on Chris Inperspective’s podcast (more on that in a bit). Why is that?
I’m sure you knew Jesus was Jewish, as were Eienstein, Freud and Marx. But did you know Craig David is Jewish!? Drake? Mac Miller (RIP)? Action Bronson? Scarlett Johansenn? Daniel Radcliffe? Zoe and Lenny Kravitz? Zac Efron? Jack Black? The list goes on! I didn’t even know any of these modern celebs were Jewish until researching this article.
Many of us hide our Jewishness because oftentimes, we can
The sad truth is, since the beginning of time, there’s been this epidemic amongst many Jewish people of hiding our ‘Jewishness’ - because oftentimes we can. That’s a privilege and a choice many of us (but not all) can make, and it can make life a whole lot easier to be able to do so.
In school, I told everyone I was Jewish and was constantly called things like ‘stingy’ and ‘dirty Jew’. It was during the South Park/Borat/Little Britain era, and my unhealed response was to just laugh along, almost encouraging it.
But by hiding our Jewishness, being apologetic about it, or laughing off the antisemitism we face, we’re just internalising it; perpetuating our ‘Otherness’ and making Jewishness more mysterious, more unknown. Easier to resent.
By being open and proud about our culture, we demystify it and break stereotypes
Imagine if every Jewish person actually wore their identities with our chest? It’s so much easier to care about a culture when you are personally familiar with it. We’d normalize and humanize Jewishness so much more.
In October 2022, I spoke out about my Jewish identity - and questioned the paradoxes of my white privilege and tensions between antisemitism and race - on Chris Inperspective’s podcast, one of our friends and record label owners in the Jungle scene. He’s done several episodes interviewing different Jewish Junglists in the scene, all with very different views (love him for that!).
Don’t internalise other people's false ideas about yourself
The process of preparing for it - and watching it back - was intense. It brought up a lot of emotions. It made me see the way I’d internalised antisemitism unconsciously, being programmed to feel shame. But it was an incredibly healing thing to do, and so many people thanked me for speaking out. Not just Jewish people either! They had a new perspective that they wouldn’t have otherwise known, so while it was scary, it was really important work.
Coco Bryce was one of many people who thanked me for speaking out
I’m proud to say Coco Byrce (aka Yoël Bego) was one of those people who hit me up to say thank you. When it comes to jungle, garage, and breakbeat, he’s royalty! He’s a DJ, producer and label owner with an extensive discography, who’s collaborated with names like Future Retro, EC2A, Rupture, Denham Audio, Balamii, Boiler Room and many more.
Hailing from the Netherlands, his background is a melting pot - Dutch, Indonesian, and Jewish - with a very close familiarity with UK culture given his musical background. He incorporates his many multifaceted identities and influences into his art through samples and symbols, like childhood cartoons (especially Snoopy), his fav movies, hip hop references, and rave flyers. I love that he doesn’t hold back on the Jewish motifs either!
We’ve been texting and voice noting about our identities and opinions for a while now, and we both agreed it was time to publicly share our views in time for his Tov Kru release: his new alias, which blends Jewish motifs with Hebrew acapellas. This article is extra personal because I’ve been in the London Jungle scene for over ten years now, so to write about Jewish Jungle with none other than Coco Bryce couldn’t be a bigger moment for me! Here’s how our chat went down.
Hey Yoël! Tell me about the Tov Kru release
Hey! So ‘Tov’ means good in Hebrew. Like Mazal Tov. In Dutch, we also use the word too: it means cool. It made its way into Dutch via Yiddish through Amsterdam.
Then there was this hip hop crew from Philadelphia in the late 80s/early 90s called Tuff Crew. I really like that stuff. So I was like, yeah, I can make a spoof of this!
I ripped those Hebrew acappella chops from YouTube, which is where I get a lot of my acappella. You can EQ it and get away with a lot of dodgy sounding sample material!
I got the instrumental bits from a children's record in an Israeli flea market when I was invited to play out there.
What were some of the significant moments that brought you to Tov Kru?
There’s been a lot! Most significantly, one of my uncles wrote a book about the Jewish side of the family, and a fair portion of it is about the Holocaust.
I was looking through it, and he’d included the list of all my family members that were put on a train transported from Westerbork to Auschwitz. It included my great grandmother and great grandfather who were murdered the same day.
What made the hairs on my arm stand up was that I found out I'm named after my great grandmother who died in that camp. On the transit list, it said Louisa Bego Yoel, and my name is Yoel Bego.
So I saw my own name, basically. I was like, ‘Oh my fucking God, this is trippy’.
I don’t use Instagram anymore, but I did then, so I posted about it.
I’d already had backlash when I posted that I was invited to play in Israel, and I was happy to be going back because I have roots there.
So this second time, when I discovered the link between my name and my great-grandmother in the Holocaust, I just wanted to show, and that’s all. I turned off the comments because I didn’t want any responses. But I did get DMS from multiple people.
Wow. That's deep. What were the responses like?
I got a lot of thank yous from other Jewish people. But a lot were about me posting about my Jewish heritage, saying that they thought I was brave to openly be Jewish.
On the one hand, I was a bit weirded out by it because I’ve never tried to hide it. I wasn't scared for my life or anything.
I worked with a lot of Moroccan and Turkish lads, some of whom would sometimes pretty blatantly slander Jews. But I’d always just be upfront with them about my Jewish heritage. And I think that because I wasn’t trying to hide it from them, they fucked with me—in a good way!
But I get why people might choose to hide it. Even for my Boiler Room set, I wore my Star of David necklace, but I was more nervous about that than the actual DJ set. But I was making a bigger issue out of it than there actually was because I got zero reaction to it. There was no backlash. But the point is, I still felt that way.
People say dumb shit about Jews all the time without even thinking about it. I've been hearing that my entire life; I've been confronted with it a lot, you know.
How is it in the Netherlands?
There are certain places in the Netherlands that, in general, are really anti Semitic.
A fairly common swear word in certain parts of the Netherlands is ‘kankerjood’ which literally translates to ‘cancer Jew’. I’m not even joking here. We swear with diseases here in the Netherlands, which, granted, is pretty grim in itself. But yeah, people do actually say this and also sometimes refer to cops simply as ‘Jews’.
Not all Jews are rich, not all Jews are white, and not all Jews are out to control the world. I find it so unbelievable that people still say this, especially in this current climate of cancel culture.
If you open your mouth about something, at least try to know what you are talking about and don't just read one side of the story.
That’s why I think it's important for us to openly talk about our jewish culture and identity!
I'm glad you say it like this because we are almost apologetic; we're almost scared to tell other people what they are saying is hurtful and dangerous.
So my release is in reaction to all of that. I'm not looking to shove my opinion down people's throats. It's more playful than that—this is my way of celebrating our culture!