Musical borrowing.

[Judah Cohen <jcohen...>]

>And Eric Werner's writings point out how the "traditional" melodies to
>Birkat HaMazon incorporate all sorts of German drinking songs, country
>waltzes,  nursery rhymes, and a motif borrowed from Humperdinck's opera
>"Hansel und Gretel".....

I support Rabbi Scheinberg's point wholeheartedly.  However, Werner's work
is quite suspect, in that he makes most of his comparisons spuriously.
While Werner supports his general point of Jewish/secular musical
borrowing, his use of specific borrowing examples (i.e., "this motive comes
from there") is problematic at best.  Though the evidence can seem
compelling in his work, that's primarily because he composes a neat world
which deals solely with written sources and works according to his own
internal system.  It is similar to my saying that a particular "Naar
Hayiti" (popularized by Kol Achai, if not composed by one of the members)
bears a phrase of "Silver Bells," so the two must be related in some way
because this simply can't be a coincidence.  Unfortunately, Werner rarely
gives more evidence than that; our desires to "make it so" provide the rest
of the argument.  As an academic, I find that while his efforts are
commendable and considerable, Werner's specifics are simply not compelling
(if not downright odd).  They're pretty trivia which are more romantic than
proven.

>It makes me wonder which contemporary melodies are going to pass into the
>corpus of "traditional Jewish music".  Already, I see that singing "Dror
>Yikra" to the melody of "Sloop John B" is so common in so many
>communities, and by many people who do not realize that it was
>"originally" a Caribbean folk song and then a Beach Boys song, that I
>would not be surprised if it is still sung 50 years from now.

>>Rabbi Scheinberg, this is marvelous.  I never even considered singing Dror
>>Yikra to Sloop John B.  You make me feel better about using alternative
>>tunes.

For what it's worth, the "Sloop John B"/"Dror Yikra" tune has been recorded
by the New York-based male a cappella group Beat'achon.  It's on their
first album.  And a "Sloop John B"/"Adom Olam" appears on the Columbia/JTS
Jewish a cappella group Pizmon's first album (which is no longer available,
I believe).  Both of these were put out c. 1993.

Judah Cohen
Music Department
Harvard University
jcohen (at) fas(dot)harvard(dot)edu
(617) 628-4783

"...I do not feel that my research suffered unduly from the fact that I
enjoyed it." -- Daniel Miller, "Modernity--an Ethnographic Approach" (p. 6)