Book Review

Funny, It Doesn't Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood. by Jack Gottlieb. State University of New York in association with the Library of Congress, 2004. ISBN 0-7914-6101-7. Pp. 306. $40.00 (cloth).

As evidenced by such composers as irving berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Kurt Weill, Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, Leonard Bernstein, Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Anthony Newman, and Bernard Herrmann, not to mention scores of outstanding singers, instrumentalists, conductors, producers, publishers, lyricists, critics, and agents, Jewish Americans have contributed richly to the creation, performance, and dissemination of the music of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood. Yet the subject of how traditional Jewish music and culture might have influenced this repertoire has received relatively little scholarly attention. Notwithstanding the work of mark slobin and others, most scholars in this area seem preoccupied with Jewish absorption of african american idioms as opposed to that of traditional Jewish music. Are the connections with Jewish culture so oblique as to make such inquiry overly speculative? Or are popular music scholars too unfamiliar with Jewish music to draw such connections? Has anti-semitism dampened investigations along these lines? Or is this lacuna more simply a reflection of the fact that the study of popular music is still in its early stages?