Radical Jewish Culture

These program notes were prepared for the Radical New Jewish music performances which were part of the ART PROJEKT Festival held in Munich in September of 1992.

American New Music has always been noted for its diversity. It is not the property or creation of any single cultural group. But it is safe to say that the participation of American Jews has been particularily strong. It is also safe to say that while this music has been labeled and analyzed by geography (downtown, east coast, west coast); genre (jazz, no-wave, hardcore, avante garde); politics, race, class and gender; and while Jewish particpation in music related business roles has been well noted (and often caricatured and exagerated by anti-semites), the phenomenon of intense Jewish grass roots creative involvement has remained strangely invisible.

The reasons for the invisibility remain themselves obscure, but we hope that if these concerts do not provide answers, they may at least articulate some questions.

To begin with, why have Jews been drawn to this music and it to them? Are there specific shared Jewish musical and cultural values which the musicians hold in common? Have these artists (many of whom remain entirely secular or removed from direct contact with Judaism) somehow reproduced Jewish paradigms in their work? Since much of the work bears few obvious connections with Klezmer or with traditional liturgical music, are there any hidden connections?

More specifically, if shared musical/cultural values exist, how have they appeared in the music? Is a historical memory of statelessness related to the “patchwork music” that came out of New York in the 1980’s? Do the “rules” in game pieces like Cobra (or for that matter, in Schonberg’s 12 tone system) reflect a Talmudic desire to codify? Has the Jewish genius for the construction of archetypal stories been useful in the angry deconstructing of punk, hardcore, and their rock predecessors (Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins)? Is Anthony Coleman’s long time fascination with the music of Eastern Europe part of a search for continuity with a destroyed past? Does the loose, motific group improvising in Roy Nathanson’s work derive in part from Orthodox prayer traditions (in which members of the group may read the same text at different speeds)? For those whose work contains the signifiers or influences of punk and hardcore, does their rage at yuppie complacency connect with prophetic rage at injustice or Jewish rage at a history of exile and aggression?

To many people, any assertions of cultural difference, the mere posing of these questions may seem divisive or threatening. While we recognize this danger, we can no longer tolerate the idea on which it is based, namely that if two cultures are different, one must be wrong or inferior. In order to understand the context of the apprehensions which surround the issue, it is important to point out that the last search for Jewish cultural influence in the arts was carried out (for quite different reasons) by the Nazis (in the Degenerate Art Exhibits of the 1930’s) and resulted in the total purge of Jewish artists and the destruction of their work. (Some of these artists managed to emigrate to the U.S. to influence the new generation represented here).

It is also important to point out the role contemporary anti-semitism (and the fear of it) have had in maintaining silence on issues of group identity, even in the U.S. (which, since the decimation of Askenazy Yiddish culture in the 40’s, now contains the oldest uninterrupted centers of Jewish culture in the Western world).

While much has been written by anti-semites about supposed Jewish control over the American myth-making apparatus of film and music, it is worth observing that there has been near total exclusion of publicly identified Jews from roles as sexualized pop icons. Jews who have participated in pop culture have almost always changed their identities and names (Tony Curtis, Bob Dylan, John Garfield, Michael Landon) or have wound up playing comics, victims, or villains. The anti-semitic vision of Jewish omnipotence clashes with the perception of most Jews working in performing arts—that publicly identifying as Jews will leave them vulnerable to eviction from the American cultural mainstream or highly restricted in the roles they can play.

In preparing this program, Jewish music has been defined broadly as a “music made by Jews,” rather than limiting the scope to music employing Hebraic scales or covering Jewish themes. The participants come from a wide range of backgrounds. Most are highly secularized, some completely non-religious. For many, the term “radical” could describe their stance within the mainstream Jewish community as well as their relationship to mainstream culture. Some have chosen to participate out of a positive desire to identify, others as an act of political will during a period of renewed anti-semitism in the U.S. and Europe. Some are multi-culturalists eager to debunk the idea of culture as a homogenous melting pot in which people must sacrafice their group identities in order to succeed. Some come because it’s a gig.

In any case, we hope this festival will provide a long missing context in which the work of these artists can be fully heard.