thoughts from Alex

[Judith R Cohen <judithc...>]

Alex (as he so often does) has provided some more grist for the thinking
mills -

> 
> 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.  

Right on. And very often, for example, listeners from India will find
WAM (my abbreviation for Western Art Music) boring because it lacks the
intervallic and rhythmic subtlety of Indian art music; or WAM listeners'
ears aren't trained to catch these subtleties in Indian art music and
they miss the complex harmonic structure of WAM. Neither is "better"
than the other. But they're not a "universal language".
Often I enjoy the SOUND of people speaking a language I don't understand
when I hear them on a bus, for example - similarly, I might enjoy the
SOUND of a certain kind of music without understanding its referentials
or even really appreciating its "language". 


> There are repertoires throughout the world that are in some way private, that 
> is, not meant to be heard by certain people.  

Absolutely.


> 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.  
Again, I couldn't agree more!
> 
> 
> 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..... .........
>  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.
> 
I have a couple of anecdotal comments on this tricky one. One is that in
Portugal, Jews for Jesus are very active, probably because they see the
cofusing situation of the Crypto-Jews ("Marranos") as very fertile
ground. Several times, a couple of them, have approached me at events,
including after I've been singing, and told me they are trying to learn
Sephardic songs or have learned some; without actually saying so in so
many words it was pretty clear from the context that these songs would
be used in a proselyting situations.

Or, in New MExico in March, when we were giving a concert for the new
National Hispanic Culture Center (apparently the first official
socio-cultural event bringing together the region's Jews and 
Hispanics), we were invited to hear an acquaintance's friend sing
Sephardic songs - at an avowedly "non-denominational" church. The singer
had learned - apparently from a woman rabbi in New MExico - songs for
the Yom Kipur and Rosh Hashana, and she felt it appropriate to sing
these as well as several Sephardic love songs, as PART OF THE SERVICE in
this church, which as far as I could see, was a church, "denominational"
or otherwsie. Was this promoting understanding? appropriating? 

Finally, Alia Musica's last few CD's sing mostly material in Hebrew,
mostly religious texts; they sing very well indeed but they sound like a
highly-trained church ensemble and the music, as they interpret it,
sounds like church music in Hebrew. They are having tremendous success
in both Spain and outside it. 
One of invented Jewish festivals in Spain, for its theatre-"wedding",
now has the songs sung by a choir composed partly of members of the
local convent choir and directed by the church's choir conductor, who'se
never heard Sephardic songs. People who attend take this as "real"
Sephardic music.

Creativity? artistic license? appropriation?

Music as a universal language???? cheers, Judith

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