The Song is Not the Same: Jews and American Popular Music

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 Me Ninety-Seven Dollars, and other Tales from the Jewish Sheet-Music Trade (Jody Rosen); ‘Dances Partake of the Racial Characteristics of the People Who Dance Them’: Nordicism, Antisemitism, and Henry Ford’s Old Time Music and Dance Revival (Peter La Chapelle); Ovoutie Slanguage is Absolutely Kosher: Yiddish in Scat-Singing, Jazz Jargon, and Black Music (Jonathan Z. S. Pollack); ‘If I Embarrass You, Tell Your Friends’: Belle Barth, Pearl Williams, and the Space of the RisquA © (Josh Kun); ‘Here’s a foreign song I learned in Utah’: The Anxiety of Jewish Influence in the Music of Bob Dylan (David Kaufman); Jazz Liturgy, Yiddishe Blues, Cantorial Death Metal, and Free Klez: Musical Hybridity in Radical Jewish Culture (Jeff Janeczco).