Contemporary American Jewish Music

Contemporary American Jewish Music

Chair: Ruth HaCohen


Joel E. Rubin, Department of Music, University of Virginia
“Redefining what a Jew means in this time”: Shifting aesthetics in the contemporary klezmer landscape

As the movement formerly known as the “klezmer revival” enters its fourth decade, this paper will examine the various creative and aesthetic choices made by several generations of musicians as they attempt to push the music into the future and, at the same time, negotiate and reshape their multiple identities as Americans, Jews and musicians in a landscape of multi-musicality. In its initial phase, the repertoire and style of the klezmer revival was dominated by the music of the immigrant clarinetists Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras. Through ethnographic interviews with a cross-section of performers involved in the contemporary klezmer movement over the past thirty years, as well as an examination of their artistic output, I trace an aesthetic shift away from the influence of Brandwein and Tarras that has taken place over the past decade. In recent years, the emphasis has been looking at the same time toward the Eastern European past and the American (and transnational) future. The responses ranged from unearthing earlier and less known repertoires, to the creation of entirely new forms, representing extremes on a continuum of approaches that often combine aspects of both. A closer examination of these phenomena will enable us a deeper understanding of the processes of spiritual and cultural transformation and renewal taking place among the postwar generations of Jews in America. Ultimately, I argue, the involvement with klezmer music represents a “redefining what a Jew means in this time.”


Abigail Wood, Joe Loss Lecturer in Jewish Music, Department of Music, SOAS, University of London
Yiddish song in 21st century America

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, to many, Jews and non-Jews alike, the idea of a thriving secular Yiddish song culture seems absurd. Most scholarly discussions suggest that creative engagement with Yiddish song ended abruptly and tragically after the Shoah; popular opinion has marked Yiddish as a dying language, if not already dead.
Paradoxically, however, during the last couple of decades a new wave of Yiddish music has hit the shelves of record stores. The ‘klezmer revival’ of the late 20th century brought Yiddish culture to a new, younger audience, spawning new fusions of Yiddish song and instrumental music from Hasidic nigunim to hip hop, and enabling a new generation of songwriters to find their voice in Yiddish.
Nevertheless, despite this creativity, as the older generation of Yiddish speakers becomes fewer, Yiddish literacy continues to fade. This paper will assess the present state of Yiddish song culture in America, considering in particular how young musicians adopt new strategies to continue the creation of new Yiddish songs notwithstanding the seemingly insurmountable linguistic challenges.


Mark Kligman, HUC, New York
New Artists, Trends and Styles of Orthodox Popular Music in NY

Since the 1970s new music has been created in the Orthodox community. This new music is in a poplar musical style and can include markers of “traditional” musical elements including vocables and expressive vocal devices found in hazzanut. The performing contexts and sound of the music draw from various contemporary pop and rock musical styles. Mordecai Ben David and Avraham Fried are the two most successful performers who began respectively in 1972 and 1980. Now that a younger generation of Orthodox Jews has grown up with this music new artists are creating a new style, promoting their music over the internet and with other web-based technologies disseminating music via You Tube.
This presentation will focus on the music of new groups like Chevra and Eli Gertsner from the “Yeshivish” or Centrist community and Blue Fringe from the Modern Orthodox Community. This new form of music in the Orthodox community challenges ideas of authenticity, appropriateness and the function of music. Living in the contemporary word, orthodox Jews have a range of responses to this new music. Religion, culture and music are intertwined displaying the complexities and nuances of modernity.

5.8.09