Re: demand for "authentic" ethnic

[Trudi Goodman <goobietheg...>]

Velaires...

Thank you for saying it out loud. It's for me more about the expression of 
my love and committment to Jewish cultures...of which there are so many, 
than whether I am correct enough. I try, HaShem knows. And I have pissed 
people off on this list before with my Deitmarisch. What is there to say 
about that???Nothing any more.
I just find that the more I perform Jewish Music, the more people ask me 
about it, it's a great spiralling thing. The  more I act in Yiddish and 
Jewish work... the more people ask me about it. It is a great rebirth, 
except that it never left, the work has continued on despite everything!!!
I love books and the written word, so I love scholarliness. By the same 
token, real living is part of the arrangement of life, so...I would hope 
that the 2 would  overlap.
  Someone on the list awhile back suggested that it is part of the Jewish 
Nature to categorize and name.  I'd say that it's part of the Human Nature 
as well! So put whatever title you want on it, make happiness abound as 
Shakespeare wold say...I just like hearing Fayvush Finkel sing "I am a 
Boarder by My Wife."(My guess is Willie would too!!!)
  A Gut Shabbos and Zei Gezundt!!!
  Trudi the G


>From: Velaires (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: Re:  demand for "authentic" ethnic
>Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:49:28 EST
>
>Actually, Simon is one of my closest friends, and we agree on exactly this
>issue in more ways than you would think.
>
>Unfortunately, much of the backward-looking that goes on with earlier music
>becomes what I call the LL Cool Jew Syndrome.  Rather than "Am I Black
>Enough?", the question becomes "Can I Speak More Yiddish Than You?" etc.
>It's a form of d**kwaving.  How many obscure mannerisms do you need to trot
>out in order to be "really down with the authentic stuff"?
>
>I call it the Buena Vista Social Disease, wherein only people who had a 
>hard
>life can get the spotlight.  It's an American Syndrome.  Look at it this 
>way
>-- Lefty frizell was probably a more influential country music singer than
>Hank Williams.  certainly the most imitated.  But, because Hank Williams'
>drinking and wife were so notorious, he gets mythologized.  Now, surely HW
>was great.  But Lefty Frizell's influence is still reckoned with at least 
>as
>much (often second hand via Merle Haggrd's influence, and Merle is right 
>out
>of Lefty).  But when a human interest angle is popped in there -- via
>NPR-type publicity and concentrating on hardship rather than music, you get
>this special disease.  ironic, in that music is supposed to be a voice that
>transcends that sort of journalism by becoming a journalism of the strength
>of the human spirit, not a laundry list of litany.  And most of all this
>holds true for Jewishness.  yes, the Holocaust was the most terrifying
>watershed faced by a people.  But Jews and Jewishness have totally proven
>that "Jew" does not mean victim.
>
>It's a touchy issue, but that word "authentic" is segregationist, and music
>is really for people, not just "people who know about the special stuff">
>
>sh
>
>

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