Re: What is Jewish Music

[Alex J. Lubet <lubet001...>]

Responding to the message of <119(dot)8eb91(dot)28521052 (at) aol(dot)com>
from jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org:
> 
> As a non-Jew who plays what music primarily for Jewish listeners (which they 
> mostly appear to enjoy and identify with), I've followed with great interest 
> the recent discussions on  defining Jewish music. 
> 
> I'm struck particularly by two aspects of the postings. 
> 
> Firstly the intense pride in the music, which I like. Secondly an aspect of 
> possessiveness which I don't like quite so much. Music is surely for the 
> whole world to enjoy and appreciate, regardless of race or religion, whether 
> as a performer or listener.
> 
>  As with most musical genres, Jewish music has borrowed from, been influenced 
> 
> by, and adapted other musical traditions. Without this mingling of genres, 
> the totality of Jewish music  wouldn't be what it is today. I believe that it 
> 
> is a cause to celebrate if people outside one's own musical, religious or 
> cultural heritage regard your music as sufficiently valuable to wish either 
> to contribute to it or borrow from it.
> 
>  Can we possibly deny that our musical lives are enriched by this 
> cross-fertilization?
> 
I would argue that an 'ethnically pure' music is just about impossible and that 
no Jewish music I know would come even close, as would be expected in the 
culture that throughout its history was the paradigm of Diaspora.  However, that
doesn't mean that certain of the world's musical hybrids aren't identified with 
certain peoples who have placed upon them a certain idiosyncracy, as is the case
with many Jewish musics.

That 'Music is surely for the whole world to enjoy' is a pleasant sentiment, but
not one borne of a careful survey of the world's music, insofar as aesthetic 
position you cite is foreign to the outlook of many peoples and many genres.  
There are repertoires throughout the world that are in some way private, that 
is, not meant to be heard by certain people.  In our own Jewish community, there
are, like it or not, programs that are exclusively, by, of, and for females 
only.  (I offer this simply as a familiar example.  People who read my posts 
know it is not an endorsement of the situation of Kol Isha, of which this is but
one manifestation.)

Sometimes musics are shared willingly, but they are also appropriated, used 
without permission, sometimes for purposes that offend or harm the original 
owners.  It is easy to ignore this and pretend there is parity of power and 
social status if you are a member of the majority or the powerful culture.  

In one of my musical guises, I am the artistic director of Blended Cultures 
Orchestra which is a multicultural ensemble that performs largely improvised 
music.  I have heard African-American colleagues in this band complain of losing
employment to white jazz musicians who are in truth not as gifted simply because
they are white.  Certainly history has shown this to have happened often.  When 
one loses one's livelihood to this kind of 'sharing' one does not feel inclined 
to celebrate the music's being for everyone.  Far be it from me to say that 
non-African Americans should never play African-American music (or to attempt to
unpack the complexities of what that might mean in 2001), but I don't want to 
take work away from my friends and only play blues or jazz with 
African-Americans in situations where I am providing rather than depriving work 
from musicians who are clearly at a disadvantage in racist America.

In another guise, I am a professor of composition at a public and thus secular 
university where I usually don't regret that I don't teach a Jewish music class.
We don't have a lot of Jewish music students at the U of M (although we have a 
wonderful Jewish community in th Twin Cities) and those students who have 
approached me about Jewish music tend to want to use it in Christian contexts 
that are often triumphalist in a manner that I perceive as damaging to Jewish 
interests.  There is obviously not a parity of Jewish and Christian power in the
world (I can easily think of 6 million reasons) an it's never as simple as 
sharing and celebrating.  That's not to say that it can't be done right or that 
you're not doing it--I've worked in several Jewish music groups who weren't all 
Jewish--but the pentecostals who do 'Jewish dancing' at their rallies do not 
have Jewish interests in mind when they appropriate our expressive forms to 
threaten us with eternal damnation if we don't embrace their evangelical 
message.  Contacts such as that make me a little less generous with my culture, 
something I want my friends in more powerful and more evangelistic faith 
traditions to understand.

Shalom,

 


Alex Lubet, Ph. D.
Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music
Adjunct Professor of American and Jewish Studies
University of Minnesota
2106 4th St. S
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612 624-7840 612 624-8001 (fax)

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