Music Festival: What is Jewish Music?

To a pulsating beat, Ramona Kozma melancholically sings about a worthless life that is given meaning by a dark pair of eyes. Yiddish singing mixes with the tango rhythm.

Kozma plays accordion and sings with Trio Picon, a German ensemble playing Yiddish tango. The band is one of many groups performing at the opening of the Festival Shalom Music. Cologne appear. The week-long event, an offshoot of the city’s celebrations of 1700 years of Jewish life in Germany, is dedicated to showcasing Jewish music.

Yiddish tango was a popular genre in the 1920s and 1930s, with poets from Latin America, the United States and Eastern Europe writing lyrics in the language of Ashkenazi Jews to emotive Argentine music. Still, it’s not a style of music that most people think of when they think of Jewish music.

“I found that there is a relatively large knowledge gap,” says Kozma. “For example, Balkan music or Romanian music is often associated with Jewish music. But that’s just not right.”

Yiddish tango is one of many genres featured on the festival programme. The palette ranges from classical art songs to contemporary jazz and club music to synagogue organ works. The musical diversity reflects the diversity of Jewish experiences. But what is “Jewish music”?

No overarching parenthesis

Jean Goldenbaum, professor at the European Center for Jewish Music in Hanover, is very familiar with this question – it is usually the first one he is asked. “The first thing I explain is that there is no definitive answer. And there is no concrete answer either,” says Goldenbaum.

There is no overarching bracket that unites Jewish music, he explains. Rather, it depends on which parameters are set and which elements are then available accordingly. “Bring something that we can use in the [jüdischen] cultural universe?”

A very restrictive interpretation may define Jewish music as liturgical music in Hebrew intended for the synagogue. In the case of Yiddish tango, the elements transcend language. “Yiddish tango is definitely written in the ‘typical’ tonality of synagogue music, which is also found in klezmer music,” says Ramona Kozma.

Compositions by non-Jewish composers that use Jewish elements can also fall under the category of Jewish music. A well-known example was performed on the opening night of the Shalom Music Festival: “Kol Nidrei” by Max Bruch. The Protestant composer wrote the piece based on Jewish melodies for the Liverpool Jewish community in the early 1880s. The title refers to a prayer recited on the eve of Yom Kippur.

identities and history

The reverse scenario – a work by a composer of Jewish descent that contains no obvious elements of Jewish musical tradition – is perhaps the most controversial when it comes to defining Jewish music, explains Jean Goldenbaum: “If the piece has no Jewish musical elements and no contains Jewish texts, but the composer is a Jew – how do we deal with that?”

Differences of opinion are inevitable, he adds – and that’s a good thing: “Because it’s about perspectives and concepts. How do you want to understand music? And it’s about identity.”

An example of the difficulties associated with questions of identity is the music of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. He was born a Jew but converted to Catholicism for employment at the Habsburg court. His compositions do not obviously draw on Jewish elements. The opening concert of the Shalom music festival featured classical songs in which Mahler used traditional German folk poetry.

Central African influences

The festival’s co-artistic director, Thomas Hoeft, emphasizes that there is more than one vantage point through which Mahler’s music can be viewed. “This repertoire has many more characteristics,” he says. “Is there something specifically Jewish about Gustav Mahler? Is that denied? Has he repressed it himself?”

“Electric Counterpoint,” a work by contemporary American composer Steve Reich, is another example of an ambiguous composition. While other works nod to his Jewish heritage, this electric guitar and sample loop piece uses Central African horn elements.

And then there’s The White Screen’s self-described “sexually charged freak party.” There is nothing particularly “Jewish” about the duo’s music, says Thomas Höft. The band combines art rock, gospel punk and psychedelic pop, always with an outsider’s perspective. “Is that Jewish, Israeli or even totally colorful world music? Is that queer music from a dance floor context?”

With its broad, inclusive approach, the Shalom Music Festival has curated a program that spans the Middle Ages to the present day, encompassing myriad styles of music and encouraging audiences to reflect on their own vision of Jewish music.

Adaptation from English: Torsten Landsberg