Re: What is Jewish Music?

[L_Cahan <L_Cahan...>]

How about the case of the man who asked a question of our list recently about
klezmer music to be referenced in a work being written to honor Holocaust
survivors, written by someone not Jewish:  is that Jewish music?

Robert Cohen wrote:

> 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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