The Song is Not the Same
There has been a long-standing relationship between Jewish Americans and the world of American popular music. The essays in this volume blend surveys of music making as a whole with profiles of single artists. This is volume 8 of the annual publication, The Jewish Role in American Life (ISSN 1934-7529), produced by the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life at the University of Southern California. Contents: Foreword (Gayle Wald); Introduction (Josh Kun); Cohen Owes M...
Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants brought a rich heritage of musical expression to the United States. On Manhattan's Lower East Side, a thriving Yiddish theater scene developed, and a new, distinctly Jewish American songcraft began to emerge. Mark Slobin's ethnographic study of the music and culture of the time traces the development of Yiddish popular song in America, delving into melodies, sheet music, and printers' iconography to bring alive a time and place that, while almost forgotten, sti...
Maqam and Liturgy (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology)
by Mark L. Kligman
This book explores the cultural connection between Syrian Jewish life and Arab culture in present-day Brooklyn, New York, through liturgical music. Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, New York, number more than forty thousand and constitute the largest single group of Jews from Syria in the world. Their thriving community includes fifteen synagogues in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where the practice of singing Arab melodies is a cornerstone of their religious services. In ""Maqam and Liturgy"", author...
The first exhaustive treatment of Eastern European Jewish music tracing its roots from biblical times through its zenith in the nineteenth century to its decline in the late twentieth century. Sholom Kalib has taken on the crucial task of collecting, analyzing, and systematically presenting in over 160 examples a magnificent tradition to future generations of cantors, scholars of Jewish music, and music enthusiasts worldwide. Traditionally, this body of music was a source of great strength, stab...
In The Shofar, Jeremy Montagu offers a detailed study of the ram's horn of the Bible, describing its history and use-both ritual and secular-from biblical times to the present. Because the same person normally blows the shofar each year during the Jewish High Holy Days, few are aware of the wide differences among communities around the world: the varying points in the Jewish liturgical service when the shofar is blown, what sound combinations exist, and the many varieties of the instrument. Thi...
Social Functions of Synagogue Song: A Durkheimian Approach by Jonathan L. Friedmann paints a detailed picture of the important role sacred music plays in Jewish religious communities. This study explores one possible way to approach the subject of music's intimate connection with public worship: applying sociologist Emile Durkeim's understanding of ceremonial ritual to synagogue music. Durkheim observed that religious ceremonies serve disciplinary, cohesive, revitalizing, and euphoric functions...
Experiencing Jewish Music in America (Listener's Companion)
by Tina Fruhauf
Experiencing Jewish Music in America: A Listener's Companion offers an easy-to-read and new perspective on the remarkably diverse landscape that comprises Jewish music in the United States. This much-needed survey on the art of listening to and enjoying this dynamic and diverse musical culture invites listeners curious about the many types of music in its connection to Jewish life. Experiencing Jewish Music in America is intended to encourage further reading about, listening to, and viewing of t...
Recording Studio (Journal / Notebook)
by Wild Pages Press Journals & Notebooks
Shpil: The Art of Playing Klezmer is both a history of this popular form of traditional Jewish music and an instructional book for professional and amateur musicians. Since the revival of klezmer music in the United States in the mid-1970s, Yiddish songs and klezmer dance melodies have served as the soundtrack for a resurgence of interest in Ashkenazic Jewish culture across the globe. Klezmer has taken root not only in America's major urban centers-New York City, Chicago, San Francisco-but also...
Sonic Ruins of Modernity shows how social, cultural and cognitive phenomena interact in the making and distribution of folksongs beyond their time. Through Judeo-Spanish (or Ladino) folksongs, the author illustrates a methodology for the interplay of individual memories, artistic initiatives, political and media policies, which ultimately shape "tradition" for the past century. He fleshes out in a series of case studies how folksongs can be conceived, performed and circulated in the post-traditi...