Re: What is Jewish Music redux?

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

I admire George's bracing take on this subject--and his exulting in our 
music's variety today ("Philo-Semitic music"--a great coinage!  Can I borrow 
it?), but I differ with him in his first principle!  If one accepts Richard 
Neuman's definition, which I've proferred before, that Jewish music is "the 
music of Jews in a given time and place"--i.e., Jews know/determine what 
Jewish music is--than we *don't* have to answer "Who Is a Jew?" in order to 
answer "What Is Jewish Music?"  And in the case of any given piece of music, 
you don't have to determine the Jewishness (or not) of the composer (or 
transmitter, or adapter, or whatever) to get a sense of whether the music is 
considered by amcha to be Jewish music.

This understanding parallels, by the way, a definition I read of folk music 
generally--it may have been by the same Norm Cohen I've cited elsewhere, but 
I'm not sure--as music which folk music audiences accept as folk music!  
It's really a pretty close parallel, in fact.

A (related) footnote, btw:  I *don't* accept Pete Rushefsky's view that 
"Non-Jews can determine for themselves that a music is Jewish, even if no 
Jew agrees with them."  Richard Neuman's definition suggests that that's 
almost exactly, 180 degrees (or is it 360?--I'm never sure) not so:  Only 
Jews determine what's Jewish music.  Only you can prevent forest fires.  But 
you don't have to be Jewish to love Jewish rye--or Jewish music.

Obviously losing it,

Robert Cohen


To be blunt, in order to
>answer the question, "What is Jewish music?" we have to be willing to
>answer a more fundamental and dangerous question, "What is a Jew?"
>
>I'm not revealing any secrets when I say that question is a minefield.

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