Re: New Jewish Music

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

W/ all respect:  I think "new Jewish music" is *way* too broad a term to 
mean or denote *anything*--to concertgoers, record buyers, listeners, 
observers, scholars, music historians--anyone!  Potentially includes 
everything vaguely or at all Jewish coming down the pike--which, then, just 
brings us to "What Is Jewish Music?", only new!--Robert Cohen (who also 
posted re "klezmer *styling" and forgot to sign it)


>From: Uravreml (at) aol(dot)com
>Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>Subject: New Jewish Music
>Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 04:10:52 EST
>
>When Brave Old World released Blood Oranges in 1997, we were in agreement
>that a scholarly consensus was developing to adopt a narrow definition of 
>the
>term "klezmer," including Yiddish instrumental repertoire but excluding 
>folk
>song, for example. We also agreed that there were good reasons to adopt 
>that
>usage. When we then considered our own repertoire, it was clear that it was
>broader than klezmer music, understood in this narrow sense. For that 
>reason
>we left the term "klezmer music" off the cover and instead plastered the 
>term
>"New Jewish Music" all over the place. (The graphic is even of a label, 
>meant
>to be a semi-ironic comment on the function of musical labels). That term
>seems to have caught on in some places, judging from the titles of some
>current radio shows, conferences, etc.
>
>I recommend the term "New Jewish Music" as one which can include both
>instrumental and vocal, compositions and arrangements, of Ashkenazi and 
>other
>Jewish traditions. To me it seems less polemical than a term like "radical
>Jewish culture," not the least because today's radical is often tomorrow's
>traditional.
>
>Alan Bern
>
>

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