RE: Billy Joel -- Jewish Music?

[Eliott Kahn <Elkahn...>]

Seth:

Thanks for sharing this information. And congratulations on a successful 
interview.

It still remains a mystery to me why people are so fixated on claiming as 
"one of ours," artists who display no Jewish musical idioms or literary 
themes in their work. There are people who actually labor in the vineyards 
of Jewish music, art, literature, theatre, and dance, so why must we name 
the ones as "Jewish" whose work and interests display none of these 
characteristics?

I love much of Billy Joels', Burt Bacharach's (and Felix Mendelssohn's) 
work, but I would never in a million years classify any of it as "Jewish 
music."

This in no way is meant to disparage their genuine Jewish feelings or 
positive identifications as Jews. But as long as we insist on putting these 
ethnic labels on works of art, we might as well try to be as accurate as 
possible.

Eliott Kahn


At 09:11 PM 5/22/00 -0400, you wrote:
> > The following is from Jewhoo, a fun website for those of us who
> > like to play the
> > guessing game.
> >
> >     "billy joel: l.i. raised singer and songwriter who does not
> > need a listing
> > of his credits. he is unquestionably jewish and has declared in
> > interviews that
> > "the jews are my people".
>
>This is absolutely true, that he has "declared" this. I know this because I
>am the source for this. I interviewed him a few years ago and asked him
>point blank if he was or wasn't, and he said of course he was, he didn't
>understand why there was ever any question about it. Somewhere in this mess
>of an office I have the actual transcript but I can't put my hands on it at
>the moment. But he made clear that his parents were Jewish and that,
>although he is not a regular synagogue-goer, he thinks of himself as a Jew.
>
>As for his music being "Jewish," that's a whole can of worms I don't want to
>go near.
>
>--Seth Rogovoy
>

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+