Re: Musicals/Jewish content

[Eliezer Kaplan <zelwel...>]

This all seems a little far-fetched. What do we actually know about
Gershwin's Jewish (musical) background?

----- Original Message -----
From: <music (at) sterlingmp(dot)org>
To: "World music from a Jewish slant" <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 1:58 PM
Subject: Re: Musicals/Jewish content


>
>   AND SPEAKING OF PORGY AND BESS...
>
>    "It Ain't Necessarily So"  is uncannily similar to the tune and scan
>    of your basic "borukh atoh adonoy".
>
>
> Oh, it's more specific than that:  It is, essentially and
> identically, "Bar'chu et Hashem Ham'vorach"--the so-called "call to
prayer".
>
> And it's surely not a coincidence, either.
>
> I think Jack Gottlieb is often credited with first noticing this--though
it
> may well have been perceived by others before him.  I've shared it with
> many students and audiences.
>
> BTW, Sonny Bono-wise, I enjoy and appreciate Gershwin's borrowing from
> Jewish music; but, at the same time, such musical appropriation makes the
> Gershwin estate's jealous husbanding of its own copywrights--or such, at
> least I gather, is the case--deeply compromised and problematic.  Just as
> is (again speaking of Sonny Bono) Disney's fierce protection of _its_
> copyrights, which in many cases were asserted over material Disney did not
> create.
>
> --Robert Cohen
>
>
>

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