-by Joe Alterman, Executive Director
In my opinion, one of the most important moments in American history took place in 1903 when, 17 years after its dedication, “The New Colossus,” a poem written by Jewish-activist Emma Lazarus was installed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. A gift from France, it was, until that very moment, just a symbol of friendship between the two nations.
A lot happened in that moment. As Ben Sidran writes in “There Was A Fire: Jews, Music & The American Dream:”
Suddenly the statue was no longer about two economic powers; it was a powerful welcome to the international outsider, a beacon of hope for the poor and disenfranchised everywhere…Emma’s poem had recast the discussion: America was now to be the homeland for all those in exile, the poorest of the poor; it was about the opportunity to change; it was about social justice. In short, it was about the Jewish narrative. No longer just a former British colony, not simply a remnant of the French or Spanish or Dutch colonial expansion, but a new America; the promised land for a people who traditionally traveled with little more than the skin on their bones and the ideas in their heads.
Just as the poem by this Jewish-American changed the whole idea of America as a whole, first and second generation Jewish-Americans did the same for American music.
There’s a famous scene in American music where Louis Armstrong was in the middle of a recording session and accidentally drops his lyric sheet. Unable to grab the sheet off the ground while the tape was still running, he had to think of something to do or say in that moment - and alas, scat singing, the sound of musical, yet seemingly random syllables, was invented on the spot.
Many are aware of the important role the Karnofksys, a family of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants in New Orleans, played in Armstrong’s early years. Armstrong worked for this religious Jewish family that spent evenings davening in their kitchen and singing Russian lullabies to their baby; he wrote that they “instilled in me singing from the heart.” Most, however, are unaware of the inspiration Armstrong drew from this family during that crucial moment in the recording studio: Armstrong shared with his friend Cab Calloway that the source of his scat singing came “from the Jews rockin’,” referring to the Karnofsky’s praying in their kitchen. However, Armstrong never spoke about this in public because he was worried that people would think he was making fun of Jews praying, which he wasn’t.
So, the seemingly random syllables of scat weren’t so random after all. The inspiration behind this sound came from Lithuania and is just one example of the many sounds from foreign lands that inspired and/or became a crucial part of American music.
Meanwhile, in upstate New York, Armstrong’s music resonated with an up-and-coming jazz-loving composer named Chaim Arluck. Arluck, the son of a cantor who got his music education in the choir at his father’s synagogue, dropped out of high school to become a performer and changed his name, combining the surnames of both of his parents to become Harold Arlen. Arlen would go on to compose countless American classics, including the song that the National Endowment for the Arts ranked #1 on their Songs of the 20th Century list, “Over The Rainbow.’ Despite the parallels of this story and that of The Jazz Singer, Arlen’s father was very encouraging of his son’s foray into the world of non-religious, popular music - so much so that he often sang prayers to the tunes of Harold’s melodies in shul.
Interestingly, there was actually something familial that drew Arlen to Armstrong and to jazz. “I don’t know how the hell to explain it,” he said. “But I hear in jazz and in gospel my father singing.”
Again, from Sidran’s “There Was A Fire:”
He claimed his father, Samuel, was “the most delicious improviser I ever heard,” and he recalled an incident from his youth when he and his father were listening to a new Louis Armstrong recording and Samuel became agitated and demanded to know where the trumpet player had gotten a particular phrase he was playing. Chaim explained it was a not uncommon “riff,” but his father maintained it was exactly something he himself had improvised during a recent service at the synagogue. Harold often repeated that he heard a lot of Louis Armstrong in his father’s cantillation.
While Arlen’s father was the cantor at Syracuse’s Temple Adath Yeshurun, his sound came from his birthplace in the Vilna section of Poland - and is the same sound that resonated with his son and made him fall in love with jazz and Black musics. When Arlen moved to Manhattan, he spent much of his time in Harlem, soaking up the sounds of Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, getting to know and sitting in with the musicians whenever he could.
Coincidentally, at the same time Harold Arlen was falling in love with Black music, an aspiring performer and actor, a young African-American named Paul Robeson was attending the synagogue services of another New York cantor - composer Jerome Kern’s immigrant grandfather - and falling in love with Jewish sounds. Robeson commented that “from the songs preached or spoken by Negroes in their religious life, and in their deep trouble under slavery, it is only a step to the beautiful songs of the Jewish people which are sung or chanted in their synagogues.” Robeson went on to perform many Jewish songs throughout his career and once commented that “The Hassidic Chant of Levi Isaac (of Berditchev),” was “a kaddish that is close to my heart.”
It’s hard to explain just what is the phenomena that has drawn so many music-loving American Jews to Black music, and vice versa, but perhaps we may find the answer in the “blue note” that both cultures share. Unlike most musics, the goal in the music of both of these cultures is not precision - as it is in European Classical Music, for example. Rather, the goal here is to tell the truth by any means necessary. Hitting the note right at its center is not the only way to hit it; sliding into or out of the note is more than okay and is actually a defining part of the music. Making use of the space in between the notes actually gives the songs and the performance of them more soul and depth. Don't believe me? Try playing the sheet music to any blues or cantorial piece exactly as written – you'll feel something missing, and this is it.
I’m reminded of a great Bob Dylan quote. "Sam Cooke said this when told he had a beautiful voice: He said, 'Well that's very kind of you, but voices ought not to be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.'"
The relationship between the African-American and Jewish communities is very important to the creation of American popular music. One crucial player in this story is another cantor’s son, Irving Berlin, whose family immigrated to America from Russia to escape Cossack pogroms when Irving was 5 years old. Much like Armstrong was influenced by the Jewish people around him, Berlin and so many other first and second generation Jewish-American composers were influenced by the African-Americans around them; most immigrant groups coming to America at that time identified with the WASPs, but the Jews identified with black culture, and often lived in black neighborhoods, which were mostly segregated from the white population.
Over the next 30 years, Berlin’s impact on American music was huge. Check this 1925 letter that composer Jerome Kern (“The Way You Look Tonight,” “All The Things You Are,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man”) wrote to famed drama critic Alexander Woolcott:
It was at a dinner in London, and I was asked what, in my opinion, were the chief characteristics of the American nation. I replied that the average United States citizen was perfectly epitomized in Irving Berlin’s music. He doesn’t attempt to stuff the public’s ears with pseudo-original ultra-modernism, but he honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from the people, manners and life of his time, and in turn, gives these impressions back to the world—simplified, clarified, glorified. In short, what I really want to say, my dear Woollcott, is that Irving Berlin has no place in American music, HE IS AMERICAN MUSIC.
How did Russian-born Berlin, in 32 short years, become, as Kern stated, “American Music?” For one, it was his stated intention - “They [other American songwriters] write imitation European music which doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “Ignorant as I am, from their standpoints, I’m doing something they all refuse to do: I’m writing American music.” However, there was something more. Again, from Sidran (and please note that “rag” or “ragtime” was the syncopated pop-music of its day):
By 1911, Berlin had discovered that one could rag a song by syncopating its words without syncopating its music, by shifting to the weaker beat and forgetting correct grammar, relying instead on how people on the street actually talked (the ongoing rush of the colloquial). In America, then, we can propose that while blacks initially provided rhythmic swing to the music, the Jews, because of their familiarity with and empathy for a heightened populism, provided the lyrical or grammatical swing, a form of American English that the dominant (white) culture could easily accept. It is not so much that the Jews dressed up black American speech; rather, they translated it into the American mother tongue in a way that could be understood and appreciated by the average man on the street. They didn’t make it “safe” so much as they made it both personal and universal...if white people taught African slaves how to speak English, it was equally true that Africans helped teach everyone how to speak American.
So, yes, the Jewish-born Irving Berlin played a very important role in helping make American music American, but what, if anything, does his being born Jewish have to do with this? After all, Berlin was the composer of “White Christmas,” changed his name from Israel Beilen to Irving Berlin, is quoted saying his music was American and had nothing to do with his being Jewish, and the only song he wrote with any hint towards Judaism was called “Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars.”
I believe that his Judaism actually does have a lot to do with it, and in fact, it can be found in “White Christmas,” which begins with the words, “I’m dreaming…”
Not unlike the song “Take Me Out To The Ballgame,” which was written by the Jewish Albert Von Tilzer, the younger brother of Berlin’s first employer, and contains the words “I don’t care if I never get back,” many of these Jewish-composed American songs contain a quality of what Sidran refers to as “longing for belonging.” These first generation Jewish-American composers came from countries where, as Jews, they were often not allowed citizenship and were deeply proud to be American citizens - and this “longing to belong” is reflected in much of the Jewish-composed American music of the time.
Important to note is that while these songs all “long to belong,” they’re usually told from the point of view of someone who doesn’t quite belong, from someone on the outside looking in, observing. Someone on the outside who understands the inside and knows what’s there but isn’t quite a part of it.
To me, the story of the Jewish imprint on American music is the not the story of Jewish composers shunning their Judaism to become more American; rather, it’s the story of defining and expanding what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be Jewish in America and what it means to be an American. It’s not simply making a list of names of Jewish-born composers and celebrating that; it’s exploring and seeking out the Jewish part of each story, which, like the music and the nation itself, is ever-evolving - and that’s what makes it so beautiful.
Case in point: one day a young, Jewish wannabe composer meets with Irving Berlin to interview to be his secretary. Berlin rejects him, telling him that this youngster would never be content to work for a self-taught composer of popular songs. This young composer then interviews with Yiddish composer Shalom Secunda, who rejects him for being “too much American, too little Jew.” This young composer, George Gershwin, was forced to find his way and, like Berlin and Arlen, forever changed music in America - and throughout the world. In fact, his “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” (the opening notes of which are same as the haftorah blessing) became the radio theme song for the resistance during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.
I’m reminded of what recently departed music-industry legend George Wein once told me, “If you grew up Jewish, and you went to Yom Kippur, you never forget it. It’s part of your life. It doesn’t mean you’re thinking about being Jewish all the time. That’s in your soul, and you’re hearing it different from how the gentile is hearing it. They’re listening to it intellectually; you’re listening to it emotionally.”
Or, as pianist Bill Charlap shared with me when we discussed the Jewish imprint on American music, “It belongs to the world and it’s all about celebrating the essence of our own culture and realizing that to have that is a gift, and as Dizzy Gillespie said to Phil Woods, ‘You can’t steal a gift.’”