This is slightly off topic, but here's an article I wrote for Hadassah Magazine about the involvement of American Jews in bluegrass and Americana music, focusing on the current crop of musicians but also providing some background on what is a decades-long involvement.
Jews Plus Bluegrass Equals Toe-Stompin' Jewgrass
Banjo picker Eric Lindberg loves with a passion the
distinctive harmonies of the acoustic country music known as bluegrass.
However, he says, as a Jew, he long felt “a bit out of the loop.
“Much of the work from the inception and early days of
bluegrass is deeply spiritual and Christian based,” says the
dark-haired, darkbearded 30-something Lindberg, who also plays guitar.
“Musically, I could connect with the songs on every level, but my
identity as a Jew from Brooklyn always kept me from truly identifying
with them.”
The solution? He and his wife, singer Doni Zasloff, formed a bluegrass band called Nefesh Mountain whose
original songs meld bluegrass and old-time licks with lyrics reflecting
Jewish traditions. “Nefesh is a Hebrew word which loosely translates as
the soul or animating spirit of all living things,” they explain on the
band’s website. “The mountain is a cross-cultural symbol used widely in
Jewish text as well as in bluegrass and old-time musical forms.”
Bluegrass and old-time are two different approaches to
traditional 20th-century American roots music, performed by ensembles
made up mainly of stringed instruments such as fiddle, banjo, mandolin
and guitar.
Nefesh Mountain’s 2016 debut album featured bluegrass
greats Sam Bush, Mark Schatz, Scott Vestal, Rob Ickes and Gary Oleyar,
and it included songs called “Singin’ Jewish Girl” and “Adonai Loves
Me.” Lindberg and Zasloff are among the current crop of musicians who
blend their deep-seated Jewish identities with an equally deep
connection to traditional roots music—a fusion that some performers and
critics dub “Jewgrass.”
[...]
[...]
New Orleans-based Mark Rubin, 51, a veteran of both the American roots and klezmer scenes, takes a different tack on his new album, Songs for the Hangman’s Daughter.
In songs such as “Southern Jews Is Good News” and “Teshuvah,” Rubin,
who was born in Stillwater, Okla., bluntly attempts to reconcile his
experience as a culturally Jewish musician in the American South.
“It is not religious music in the usual sense,” says music
critic Ari Davidow. Rubin “is in-your-face about who he is and how he
doesn’t fit stereotypes. He is not just making a statement to
anti-Semites who see Jews as aliens, but also to Jews of the coasts who
find it alien to imagine that there are Jews who live in redneck
territory, proudly embracing redneck values.”
The involvement of Jews with American roots music goes
back decades, to the folk and old-time music revival that kicked off in
the late 1950s and in which Jewish musician, musicologist and filmmaker
John Cohen was a key figure. (Today, one of the top bluegrass artists is
Jewish musician Noam Pikelny, recipient of the first annual Steve
Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass in 2010, though he
does not address his Jewish identity in his music.)
Mandolin and clarinet virtuoso Andy Statman and
award-winning scholar and performer Henry Sapoznik, now director of the
Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture at the University of Wisconsin,
were both pioneers of the klezmer revival movement. They had been
steeped in old-time and bluegrass before turning to Yiddish sources in
the 1970s.
.... Read full article
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