RE: Israeli Music Today

[Mayer Pasternak <mayer...>]

Hi Dick,

As being the person responsible for adding all those titles - I'd like to say 
the following:
This is music manufactured in Israel by Jews and and is being requested by Jews 
and much of the lyrics are in Hebrew - that is about the only thing Jewish 
about them. Whether or not this is Jewish music is an issue of how you define 
that rather nebulous and undefined term - as this list has been grappling with. 
People have been asking for more of this music and we are making it available, 
the same way that we make available ALL forms of Jewish music even if it does 
not satisfy our personal tastes or sensitivities. As a result of our customers 
requests we have added the entire backlist of Hed Artzi, NMC and Helicon to our 
site over 1,100 titles. We have been pushing the Israeli labels to have us add 
audio clips so that the world audience can make intelligent decisions about 
what this music is all about. As a result Hed Artzi has started by having us 
add the first 5 complete Tracks of 60 of there more popular albums and new 
releases in real audio format - these are currently online. 

I welcome you to peruse the expanded section and form your own impressions at:  
Israeli recordings
http://jewishmusic.com/exec/goto?jmcom/isrecs.htm

Mizrahi recordings
http://jewishmusic.com/exec/goto?jmcom/orrecs.htm


Mayer Pasternak
Webmaster @ Jewishmusic.com

----------
From:   Dick Rosenberg[SMTP:drosenberg (at) dht(dot)com]
Sent:   Tuesday, July 27, 1999 3:16 PM
To:     World music from a Jewish slant
Subject:        Israeli Music Today

I just spent the past while browsing through some new audio samples of
Israeli music on the Tara web site. I have to admit I was pretty
disappointed. I know that some references have been made on this list to
the differences between Israeli music pre around the 80s and from the
80s on, but I wasn't really prepared for the magnitude of the
differences. It seems like the Israeli "stars" have taken everything
that's banal and schlocky about modern "American" pop music (overuse of
synthisized effects, e.g.) and incorporated it into their music, while
discarding everything that (to me as an American Jew) denotes
"Jewishness" or "Israeliness".

I obviously have a bias toward the music of the Chalutzim and their
successors (we play a number of Naomi Shemer tunes in my band), and I
obviously realize that I as a kid threw away the music of my parents and
embraced Rock and Roll (back when it was good in the early-mid 50's :-),
but I find it difficult to see this music as Jewish. There must be a
difference between Jewish music and music sung in Hebrew by pop singers
who are Israeli.

Comments? 

Dick Rosenberg

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