effect on music

[Judith Cohen <judithc...>]

hi, re the question of the effect of politics on music:
In Spain in the late summer or early fall there was a short-lived suggestion on 
a Spanish folk music discussion list to boycott "all Jewish music". After 
someone else said Jewish music was such a wide concept that how could anyone be 
sure what it was and wasn't they dropped the idea. But another reason, 
unstated, for dropping the idea was simply that at the same time as they 
unilaterally, and without exception (in my experience) denounce Israel with no 
opening for historical or any other kind of discussion, the same musicians do 
very well recording their own versions of Sephardic songs, which in most cases 
they know absolutely nothing about but see as a legitimate marketing tool, 
as "part of our Spanish historical heritage". Harsh? I guess. But I've been 
around Spain many years and it's what I see. My own CD has done well which I'm 
mentioning ONLY because remarks were made by one person on the list about "a 
certain woman of the Hebrew race who makes sure her Jewish music cd sells well 
in our country", meaning me.

When an Israeli musician was invited to perform, by the Israeli Embassy in 
Madrid, the coffee house that booked him for an auxiliary performance wouldn't 
announce him as "Israeli" or even "Jewish" (this was in the spring of 
2002) "for security reasons".

The European Day of Jewish Culture music (and other) events were cancelled in a 
small town which vaunts itself as particularly supportive of its Jewish 
historical heritage, and its friendship with the Israeli EMbassy: they also 
denied having cancelled the events, even in local papers. The tourist office 
told me and others it had been cancelled "because of Palestime." Several other 
places either cancelled their invented-Jewish-festival events or seriously 
consdiered cancelling them but in the end decided to go ahead. Several are 
going ahead this year, mostly with a tourism-marketing approach which has 
characterized them all along ("recovering our medieval Sephardic heritage by 
dresisng up as picturesque medieval Jews and singing 18th and 19th century 
Judeo-Spanish songs" style).
The October 2002 ethnomusicology conference included a very one-sided graduate 
student paper about anti-Israel protest songs among Palestinians, which no one 
challenged for its unprofessional biases; and a splendid, barely-attended 
performance by the legendary Bukharan Jewish singer and dancer Tofakhon (most 
people knew neither that she was Jewish nor indeed that she was performing; it 
was the first day, at lunchtime).
After the conference there were weeks of discussion by email regarding the bias 
of a resolution that one of the organization's sections was proposing, which I 
won't go into here because it isn't directly music related: but it did show how 
prejudiced supposedly objective ethnomusicologists are when it comes to Israel. 
(I certainly put my two cents into that one....)

In Canada, so far I haven't seen any problems and the splendid peace concert in 
June 2002 will have a sequel, though not organized by the same people, as an 
evening of music and engagement, February 6th, in Toronto, with Jewish and Arab 
musicians participating.

And security, which the June concert didn't have.

That's what there is to report from what I know.  Judith






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