RE: What Is Jewish Music? (revisited!)

[Velaires <Velaires...>]

> Your statement would be true if that was always the case, otherwise that 
> "if" is a big assumption to make.

I'm giving the bcreator of the music the benefit of the doubt.
> 
> I am sorry Skip, as a Jewish folklorist, I have watched these guys.   For 
> some, their goal is advancing American and not Jewish music.   They have 
> little real Jewish consciousness.   Others certainly don't expect to make a 
> lot of money doing doinas, but they appreciate the value of a fad when they 
> see one.  They figure that being a big fish in a little pond is better than 
> being a little fish in a big pond, since that big pond is so overcrowded 
> and so highly commercialized.   The requirements for making this music seem 
> to be very loose and very, very few in the audiences have familiarity with 
> the fine points in the music to complain, or at least complain effectively. 
>  This means that you can play a special role in introducing new music to an 
> audience.  Such a role is always very gratifying, even heroic - something 
> that American non-Jewish music doesn't offer today.  If anything most 
> American music today sounds very derivative and most people feel as if 
> everything has already been done.

I agree with you to a large degree, but with maybe more leeway than you're 
seeing fit to grant.  I do believe a lot of people look for something obscure 
that requires an elaborate thesis, so they can look cool explaining stuff.  But 
I think some people are sincere in wanting to make a contemporized, personal 
expression about Jewishness in perspective to the rest of their world.  And 
that is totally legit as a Jewish expression.
 

  I think that this is one reason for the 
> deep interest in world music which klezmer and Yiddish have now become part 
> of.   It is klezmer's inclusion in this sexy music category that promises 
> these musicians the kind of attention that straight American jazz or rock 
> does not.   Going klezmer is a strange, seemingly antithetical mix of 
> exotic, and for the Jewish musicians, proprietary at the same time.

I think another reason for its popularity in certain quarters is simply that 
it's very good music when it's played well.
> 
> One certainly doesn't have to make "Jewish" music for Jews to like your 
> music.   Jews don't restrict themselves only to Jewish music.  

I have yet to make anything I would specifically call "Jewish music".


Putting in 5-10% of some Jewish melody doesn't make it 
> Jewish music, but it may however reflect the musicians high level of 
> assimilation and low level of Jewish consciousness.

I don't think assimilating removes one's Jewish consciousness.
 
Since you live on the West Coast where there is 
> little of the real thing, I can understand why you made the comments you 
> made (please don't reduce this comment to East Coast prejudice - I have 
> heard this very remark/complaint from native West Coasters for many years.) 
>  But for us who grew up with it all around us, things are not as relative 
> as you make them out to be.

Dear Reyzl-- I grew up in South Philadelphia and have only lived in LA for four 
years.  In short, with regard to regional familiarity issues --  Don't even go 
there.
> 

> I don't think that "purity" is going to be that useful a ruler here, but 
> "distinctiveness" is certainly possible, even though some of the stuff we 
> hear sounds like general "Eastern European" to the untrained ear.

I don't think that music is best made so that a panel of experts can listen and 
decide whether an "untrained ear" can be moved by communicates Jewishness. 

So you take the wishy-washy "everything is relative" approach.

"Wishy washy"? It's not being passive-aggressive to insist on an artist's right 
to express himself as they see fit.

   I would 
> bet you any money that if you were to first listen to Zorn's music 
> blindfolded, without the explanatory intro and identification, you and most 
> others wouldn't think it's Jewish music.

You'd lose that bet.  The first time I heard Masada, I wasn't told what it was, 
and was actually under the impression that it had something to do with Hankus 
Netsky, because it represented -- TO ME -- this very heavily Eastern European 
melodic cast with Third Stream ideas.  I was shocked to find out it was Zorn.

   But, since the overwhelming 
> "coolness" of the label, hype, and the buzz around him has made sure to 
> mold your and a lot of other people's opinions, you buy it.   

Don't insult my intelliegnce or my musicianship.  You don't have that right 
unless you can play all my music better than I can.

Furthermore, my opinions of Zorn's entire (huge) output vary from project to 
project.  I like many things he's done.  Others have not reached me very 
effectively at all.  


Now I must tell you that I have heard very little Zorn in my life 
> (had tickets twice but didn't get there), but when I sat and listened to 
> him at the Radical Jewish Festival two years ago, I didn't get it at all.

This guy has sixty albums out, you see one performance, and you're ready to 
dismiss him?

 

I  guess that "Zorn" is a legitimate musical category.

Each of us is a legit musical category, if we're doing music honestly.


But just because certain music moves me, doesn't mean 
> that I would call it Jewish.

And the fact that something moves you, or me, doesn't mean anybody else in the 
world has to like it. 
If one has a  lifelong intimacy with Jewish/Yiddish music because you grew up 
in the 
> Yiddish community which created and breathed it, and furthermore, have 
> rather heavy musicological training in the field, you have more than earned 
> the right to pass judgements on what you hear.

"Form an opinion" yes, you have the right.  "Pass judgement on someone else's 
art", no.
> 
> Skip, I have personally, professionally, familialy, and communally 
> dedicated the last 28 years of my life to the preservation and continuation 
> of Eastern European Jewish culture and language and this is the filter 
> through which I judge these things.  If you want to call this the "style 
> police", you certainly have the right to do so.  But at least understand my 
> perspective.

I understand your perspective, and I admire that you've made a life out of 
preserving something I find beautiful.  But I don't think you have earned the 
right to say an artist's expression is "Jewish enough" for the Jewish culture.  
The culture itself decides that over time. Not the academe.
> 

Skip Heller

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