New Sub-Categories and Adjectives for Jewish Music

[JeffSchan <JeffSchan...>]

I find it a bit strange coming to John Zorn's defense.  My esthetic is quite a
bit different from his, although my band has performed on one of his "Radical
Jewish Culture Festivals" in the past.  I haven't actually heard the Bacharach
CD - I hope George Robinson will speak to that (I know he has reviewed it for
Jewish Week in New York) - but what I think Zorn is doing is issuing a "great
Jewish composers" series.  To tell the truth, I'm not much of a Bacharach fan
myself, but I think what Zorn is doing is attempting to broaden the concept of
modern Yiddishkeit and I applaud that.

Too many of us working in more contemporary forms are tired of being excluded
from what is thought of as the Jewish tradition.  I am not too much for labels
(I have seen my CDs put in jazz, classical and even new age (?!) sections of
record stores), and I don't claim that everything I write or play is Jewish.
What I am tired of is being excluded from the "mainstream" of Jewish cultural
life in the US because I do not work in traditional Jewish forms.

I'll give you an example.  After my father died 5 years ago, I have tried to
contact and produce a concert of second generation composers.  I approached
the Jewish Museum (among other Jewish presenting institutions) in NYC with the
idea.  Although the person who I contacted was very much for the proposal -
the programming panel decided that they weren't interested in promoting
contemporary Jewish music at the Museum.  Finally, the project was realized
last spring at The Kitchen - an avant garde performance space which has no
specific commitment to  Jewish art.

I believe this trend is very much one that is specific to the US.
Unfortunately the American Jewish community has assimilated the general
American antipathy to modernist music.  I am told by my European colleagues
that the European Jewish community is much more supportive of contemporary
artists, just as the societies which they live in are.

The problem with culture is that it is evolves.  So if people try to exclude
artists who try to broaden Jewish culture, then that culture will become
something which is merely archival, and not alive.  I have a lot of respect
for those who wish to preserve European Jewish culture as it was.  But there
is a living Jewish community here in the US and if a number of bands throw
rock, jazz and other elements together with the klezmer tradition, to name
only one, I think that is fine.

As a cautionary note, I work with and have many friends among avant-garde jazz
musicians, and have seen the terrible effect that reactionaries like Wynton
Marsalis have had on the black community and the music by waging a war to
exclude them from broad umbrella of "jazz".  I hope the same does not happen
in the Jewish community.

Jeffrey Schanzer