Pacifist Rutstein shares politics
By KYLE MUNSON REGISTER MUSIC CRITIC
June 8, 2006
Baltimore native Sonia Rutstein treats her folk songs like ballistic missiles armed with liberal love.
"Music doesn't discriminate," she said last month during a rare few days at home, off the road. "I think music's a great way of combining what touches people's hearts, beyond what they dislike."
To that end, Rutstein, better known as the singer-guitarist and driving force of SONiA & disappear fear (with drummer Laura Cerulli and bassist Angela Edge), will perform Sunday in downtown Des Moines as part of Capital City Pride's annual rally in support of the state's lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community.
Rutstein also travels to Jerusalem for the like-minded Aug. 6-12 WorldPride celebration.
And on March 21 (the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq) Rutstein released an album of dance remixes of her politically pointed song "No Bomb Is Smart," hoping to infiltrate nightclubs across America and throughout the Middle East.
"It just seems so preposterous to me that as Americans we spend 60 percent of every dollar to deconstruct our planet into the military," she said. "It just really bothers me ... perpetuating such a barbaric and primitive daily routine."
Rutstein is an outspoken pacifist but qualifies that she likes to write plenty of light, romantic and silly songs as well. Her muse was shaped initially as a "Jewish person growing up in a predominantly Christian country," with a father who was a "big lover of folk music" and a mother with a taste for Italian opera. She grew into her bisexuality - "later in life my major relationships have been with women" - and originally founded disappear fear with her sister, Cindy Frank.
At heart Rutstein retains her youthful idealism.
"I believed that there could be peace in the world and that we didn't have to put our energy into, you know, things that bring out the worst in people," she said.