African Music/Radical Jewish music

[JeffSchan <JeffSchan...>]

Ben Gidley wrote:

>When Jewish music enters into dialogue with African-American
>music, something similar is happening. While musical purists
>want to patrol the fences between different traditions,
>placing them in dialogue, highlighting the moments when our
>histories have come together, also poses these questions.

First, I wanted to respond with a personal anecdote, and then some more
musical considerations.

Over the years, a number of my African-American friends and associates have
told me that I was "cool" - using the word in its classic-jazz sense, to mean
not showing much emotion, rather than "hip."  This always amused me.  Several
years ago, a Jewish academic friend of mine who is doing research on the
subject of "cool," told me about one theory of its possible origins in the
slave period.  The house slaves who had daily contact with their masters could
not show their hatred overtly.  Thus they stayed behind a "mask" of
obsequiousness, and hid their real emotions.  This theory hit me like a brick.
My father, a concentration camp survivor who mainly did clerical work, used
precisely the same survival mechanism and passed it on to me.  For me, showing
emotions, or letting people know what you are thinking is dangerous, because
it can give them power over you.  This is a very prevalent response among the
second generation.  So it hit me that my father was not just a survivor, but a
slave.  Since much of the oppression of African-Americans is rooted in the
consequences and holdovers of the era of chattel slavery, I feel a certain
connection with that.  And although the oppression of European Jews before the
War is quite different from that of black Americans, there are always
similarities in the cultures of oppressed peoples.

Ever since I was in high school and a friend introduced me to jazz, I have
been a big fan of jazz, and the more avant-garde developments and offshoots of
it.  I have had the pleasure and honor of working with some great African-
American musicians such as Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Leroy Jenkins and
Oliver Lake.  And although I appreciate those who want to maintain traditional
Jewish culture, I am much more interested in combining my background with
artists of other diverse backgrounds to create something new.  Some people say
they can hear the yiddishkeit in my playing when I work with other people and
some say they can't.  What is important to me is that I know it is there.

Thanks Ben, for raising an interesting question.

Jeffrey Schanzer