What is Jewish Music?

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

A while ago, Alex Lubet--or maybe it was Wolf, cited by Alex--offered the 
imaginative definition of Jewish music as "music used by Jews to propagate 
Jewish life."  Though I think that's an intriguing addition to our files, as 
it were, I've been meaning to take (some) issue with it--as I think 
motivation is always a difficult and problematic thing to assess.

What if music with some traditional or traditional-sounding (whatever that 
means) Jewish content, or music without (discernible) such, at least in the 
minds of a given listener or listeners, was created by the composer as a 
means of expressing his own Jewish identity--and/or his relationship _to_ 
Jewish identity, or Jewish culture and music, or Jewish history, or 
whatever; but (s)he lacked the specific intention of "propagating Jewish 
music."  Is the result Jewish music?

I'm thinking, for example, of many of the compositions that come under the 
(anomalous?) rubric of "Radical Jewish Music"--from the composers around the 
Tzadik label, the Knitting Factory, and such.  I don't know that any--or, 
anyway, some--in that scene particularly intend to propagate Jewish 
life--and that's not a typical motivation for composing music (or for most 
artistic work) in any case.  But of course one *could* argue--though this, 
too, would be a variable/subjective/problematic judgment--that their music 
does, *in fact,* help propagate Jewish life.  Indeed, one could perhaps say 
one or both things about Wolf's music itself--soon coming to Tzadik, as it 
happens (though only he could really settle the first question, obviously).

What say you--Wolf, Alex, et al.?   Do you really have to intend to 
propagate Jewish life for your music to be Jewish music?

--Robert Cohen
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