Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the Jewish Music Special Interest Group Paper Prize of 2018 Mazal Tov, Amigos! Jews and Popular Music in the Americas seeks to explore the sphere of Jews and Jewishness in the popular music arena in the Americas. It offers a wide-ranging review of new and old trends from an interdisciplinary standpoint, including history, musicology, ethnomusicology, ethnic studies, cultural studies, and even Queer studies. The contribution of Jews to the development of the music industry in the United States, Argentina, or Brazil cannot be measured on a single scale. Hence, these essays seek to explore the sphere of Jews and popular music in the Americas and their multiple significances, celebrating the contribution of Jewish musicians and Jewishness to the development of new musical genres and ideas.
Trade Review“By placing chapters on Jews and popular music in the USA alongside chapters on their South American analogues, the context of these studies becomes subtly altered. This isn’t just because the Argentinian and Brazilian artists discussed are often much less well known globally than American ones, but also because a ‘hemispheric’ focus enables – potentially at least – a destabilisation of the sometimes inward-looking perspective that dominates discussions of Jews, popular music and the USA. As Cohen argues: ‘By adding Jewishness to [the] multidimensional North–South topography, existing histories of political upheaval, activism, population movement, and zealous diplomacy gain new veins of inquiry’ (p. 241). Or, to put it another way, by considering North and South American Jewish popular music together, we might be able to re-position Jewish music in the Diaspora communities of the Americas into a more fluid notion of Diaspora.” Keith Kahn-Harris, Popular Music, Volume 36 - Issue 1 - January 2017
Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction, Amalia Ran & Moshe Morad 1. Is "White Christmas" a Piece of Jewish Music?, Ellen Koskoff 2. The Musical Worlds of Jewish Buenos Aires, 1910-1940, Pablo Palomino 3. Tristes Alegrías: The Jewish Presence in Argentina’s Popular Music Arena, Amalia Ran 4. Jacob de Bandolim: A Jewish(-)Brazilian Composer, Thomas George Caracas García 5. Walls of Sound: Lieber and Stoller, Phil Spector, the Black-Jewish Alliance, and the “Enlarging” of America, Ari Katorza 6. Singing from Difference: Jewish Singers-Songwriters in the 1960s and 1970s, Jon Stratton 7. ¡Toca maravilloso! Larry Harlow and the Jewish Connection to Latin Music, Benjamin Lapidus 8. Roberto Juan Rodriguez’ “Timba Talmud”: Diasporic Cuban-Jewish Musical Convergences in New York, Nili Belkind 9. Yiddish Song in Twenty-First Century America: Paths to Creativity, Abigail Wood 10. Fight for Your Right to Partycipate: Jewish American Rappers, Uri Dorchin 11. Gypsy, Cumbia, Cuarteto, Surf, Blah Blah Blah: DJ Simja Dujov and Jewish Musical Eclecticism in Argentina, Lilian M. Wohl 12. Queer Jewish Divas: Jewishness and Queerness in the Life and Performance of Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, and Olga Guillot, Moshe Morad 13. Third Diaspora Soundscapes: Music of the Jews of Islam in the Americas, Edwin Seroussi Closing Notes: The Soundstage of Jewish Life, North and South, Judah M. Cohen Index
