Re: Cohan: not a Jew.

[Eliott Kahn <Elkahn...>]

>
>
>In conclusion, I'd say that not every great American Broadway/popular
>songwriter has to be Jewish.


Not every one was--there were Cole Porter and Harry Warren after all. 

But you must realize that Cohan was popular during the first decade of the 
twentieth century and was a fitting representative of the waves of Irish 
immigrants that preceded the Russian and Eastern European Jews (and Italians) 
that began trickling into America from ca. 1884. Cohan was preceded by the late 
nineteenth-century Harrigan and Hart shows, some of America's earliest "musical 
theatre." Of course some of the characters and situations in their shows had to 
do with Irish immigrants.

There was a famous story, I believe from the early days of ASCAP, when Cohan 
introduced the young, up and coming Irving Berlin as a talented "Jew Boy." One 
shouldn't be too surprised at such behavior between two street smart immigrant 
groups, but--as I've mentioned previously--one should give people like Berlin 
credit for breaking down the ethnic barriers that he did. Purists frequently 
complain that people like Berlin and other assimilated Jewish songwriters 
should have written more "Jewish" or "ethnic" music. I'm sure if they wanted to 
work in the Yiddish Theatre like Sholom Secunda and Abe Ellstein they would 
have. 

I still maintain that the ground work of these assimilated songwriters made it 
possible for people to freely express themselves in a Jewish musical idiom 
today--as most of the people do on this list. Times change. But Berlin's 
commitment to "Americanizing" Jewish music and Jews did play well with the 
general population and made us far more acceptable as Americans.

I suppose if there was one thing Berlin and many of these artists--as well as 
the entire movie industry--regretted, was that they could have been more vocal 
about helping their European cousins survive the Holocaust. But I'm afraid most 
Americans' actions on that account were sadly lacking.

Eliott Kahn


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