A Kipa Seruga wearing friend of mine told me a story of how he had seen a young Rosh Yeshiva walking toward a shul on an Erev Shabbos in the same direction he was driving and offered him a ride. When he got in the car RY was surprised to hear that the music on the radio was Jewish. He said to my friend, "What a relief! I was reluctant to take you up on your offer because I thought you would certainly be listening to Rock and Roll." Leaving aside the obvious prejudice this RY had in making such assumptions, I have to wonder what exactly this RY was afraid of? Did he really think that the Bal Chesed who offered him a ride was going to be listening to some sort of disgusting song on the radio, let alone expose a RY to it? I doubt that. He probably just considers any non Jewish music to be Assur.
I have long contemplated the concept of Jewish music. In my view it doesn’t exist. The closest thing we may have to Jewish music is the Trop, the cantillation used in Kriyas HaTorah or in the Haftorah. Please don’t misunderstand. I am just as much of a fan of Shlomo Carlebach as the next fellow but I don’t think it is fair to call his melodic compositions Jewish. Shlomo Carlebach was a master of his craft, a genius in fact. There is no one like him today that can compose melody the way he did. And he was prolific. His haunting melodies so permeate the world of "Jewish music" that most people don’t even realize they are singing or humming a tune he composed. No one could put the words of God’s writ to music better then he could. But in a thinly veiled reference to Shlomo Carlebach in the Igros Moshe RMF barely permitted it.
Is Carlebach’s music really Jewish? I don’t think so. Certainly the rock and roll type music that we hear today at weddings and on CDs can’t be so classified. So what makes the songs Jewish? Well, of course it’s the words, usually taken from Tehillim.
There was a big uproar back about 15 or 20 years ago about the song, “Yiddin”, composed by MBD. It was discovered that the melody to those words was... “Borrowed” form the song “Genghis Khan”, a song that glorified the morally depraved lifestyle of the fellow by the same name. Here are some of the lyrics:
He was the greatest lover and the strongest man of his day and we have heard that all the women fell him so they say and he bred seven child in one long night he had his foes a-running at his very sight and nothing that could stop him in this world.
Well of course those lyrics are upsetting. Many Gedolim tried to Assur the song. How can anyone accept songs derived from such Debauchery? Yet it is still heard at virtually every wedding. And No Rav or Gadol I have ever seen has stopped a band from playing it. The answer is simple really and this is where I disagree with those who want to ban this type of music (which is quite in character for them as they rarely miss an opportunity to ban anything that is not Torah based). They say that the music isn’t Jewish. Well, Newsflash: Carlebach is no more Jewish than the rock and roll type music of MBD or Avraham Fried. The difference is that both of these gentlemen have taken melodies form current popular culture as well as the folk music of European origin where-as Carlebach has drawn mostly from the cultures of Poland and Russia. For that matter Sefardic music is no more Jewish than Carelbach or MBD or Fried. Their source for meleody is the melody common to Middle-Eastern cultures.
Why is Russian folk music ot Arabic sounding music of Sefardim more Jewish than Rock and Roll? Well, they're not. I think it is an entirely subjective judgment on the part of these rabbinic leaders. They were used to hearing the Carlebach type sound of Eastern Europe and THAT frame of reference has long been forgotten.
The charge against the current Jewish music is that it is too similar to popular culture of our times. But I say, So what? No one who sings and MBD tune or a Fried tune thinks he is singing Rock and Roll. What’s the difference where it came from as long as the melody is enjoyable and helps to create an atmosphere of Simcha in a wedding hall? Music is very subjective. If people enjoy the sound of a Rock and Roll beat, let them! Why ban it just because of its source? Is the Russian popular culture that the Carlebach melodies are derived from any better?
Another thing I have heard recently is the fact that Rock and Roll type “Jewish” music is “jungle music” ...that its intent is to stir up the basest of instincts in us. But is that really so? Do the songs, “Yesterday”, “Penny Lane”, or “Follow the Sun”, by the Beatles stir up our baser instincts? Is Elton John’s “Circle of Life” a base melody? Is the Everly Brothers’ song, “Wake Up, Little Suzy” disgusting? I don’t think so, at least not any more than Ghengis Khan. And neither are many of the songs today that based on the beat of Rock and roll. It is the lyric not the melody which can be base. Melody should never be banned unless it is clearly linked to a base lyric.
But as in everything else some of our current rabbinic leadership do, if they don’t like a certain portion of it, they just put a blanket Issur on all of it.
I for one am not giving up any of my collection of Jewish music, nor my extensive collection of Rock and Roll.
