Re: survey and Musical/Tin Pan Alley

[GAronoff <GAronoff...>]

Alex Lubet wrote: 

"I like to think of the musical (also the classic Tin Pan Alley song) as a
Jewish genre, although I'm not exactly sure what's Jewish about it.
(lbviously, there are Yiddish theatre antecedents, but I specualte that
there's more)."

Alex and all:

I suspect that the answer will come more from sociology than musicology.  Tin
Pan Alley, musical theater, as well as the Brill Building songwriters and
producers like Lieber and Stoller, Phil Specter, Carol King etc. all seem to
share two characteristics.  There is an obvious deep love of words that seems
fully appropriate for the "People of the Book."   Also these classic American
songs seem so deeply non-Jewish, eg. White Christmas, that they can best be
understood in the context of American assimilationism.  Like the film
industry, the music business is full of Jews articulating what it means to be
American, that is to say not Jewish.  All of this is important in
understanding the place of Jews in American culture, and in no way detracts
from the wonderful music that these Jews created.

Alternatively, there is a small trend for some popular performers to add
explicit Jewish content to their music.  Peter Himmelman, John Zorn, and Phish
are examples. 

Gideon Aronoff