Re: What Is Jewish Music? (revisited!)

[GAronoff <GAronoff...>]

First I would like to more enthusiastically endorse Sabbath in Paradise.  It 
gives a good picture of the diversity within the big tent of Jewish music.  
It is too easy to see the film as a dichotomy:  Andy Statman v. Marc Ribot.  
I saw the film as giving voice - verbal and musical - to a spectrum of 
artists struggling with the question What Is Jewish Music?   Intention was 
crucial.  But for many so was immersion in Jewish traditional sounds.  

I also liked the film as a film.  The interwoven interviews, concert footage, 
and fictional short story of the Sabbath worked really well for me.  It was 
both informative and emotionally moving.

As for the assertion that some of these musicians are trying to be big fish 
in a small pond, this seems to belittle two important features of Jewish 
musical fusion.

>From my listening to a fair number of Tzadik, JAM and other fusion releases, 
I see many of these artists as trying to find a way to fit a Jewish element 
into their broader careers.    This seems to be totally valid, both Jewishly 
and artistically.  Judaism is very diverse in the United States.  Why should 
we be surprised if the "Jewish Album"  of different artists sounds very 
different from what many of us were raised with.  Also, why should we demand 
that an artist become a folklorist or chazan before they can make their own 
form of Jewish expression.  And why would we want a weak klezmer performance 
rather than a strong jazz performance by a jazz artist investigating his or 
her own Jewish heritage and Jewish soul.

As for Jewish music generally, these musicians are doing something that seems 
traditionally Jewish to me.  Incorporating elements of the local sound into 
their own Jewish music.  This incorporation has happened in the past to such 
a degree that we now view many of these incorporations as the purest of 
Jewish expression.  The most musically sophisticated on this list can 
certainly tell what is traditional and what is the incorporated musical 
element, but for (I would bet) many on this list and certainly many in the 
audience, a doina is Jewish, period.  So why shouldn't an artist like Rick 
Recht incorporate a John Cougar Mellancamp type heartland rock sound into his 
Jewish album "Tov."  Rick has a career as a rock performer totally separate 
from his Jewish material.  But he has made an album - that I don't believe 
could possibly be viewed as anything other than Jewish music - that makes 
heartland rock sound Jewish.  

In the end we will appreciate or not appreciate any individual act of fusion, 
personal expression, or whatever.  But we gain little criticizing the 
Jewishness of the exercise.

Gideon
   

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