Exploring "Conversations: Musical and Literary Exchanges in American Jewish Culture"
The Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Music at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music presents the "Conversations" series, a blog that delves into engaging discussions about the American Jewish experience in music.
Over the upcoming academic year, the series will offer a musical census, illuminating lineages and imagining futures of American Jewish music through reports from present-day artists and stories culled from the archive. The series aims to open a dialogue about the persistence of memory and change in Jewish music and the use of the sounds of the past to address keenly felt needs in the present.
One of the main focuses of the series will be the Kwartin Project, which will feature regular updates from the translation and analysis of Cantor Zawel Kwartin's Yiddish language autobiography, Mayn Lebn (My Life). The project will shed light on the material and social conditions that shaped the cantorial "golden age" and the pop culture phenomenon of star cantors.
Another significant topic will be the Malavsky Family Choir, led by Cantor Samuel Malavsky (1894-1983) and featuring Goldie Malavsky (1923-1995). The choir straddled the line between liturgy and borscht-belt entertainment and staged ritual events in non-synagogue spaces to challenge normative gender ideologies that regulated who could claim authority as a ritual leader. The series will present curated excerpts from a family scrapbook and recordings, exploring how Jewish Americans used music, particularly sacred music, to create spaces for "outsiders" to become authorities.
The series will also host regular guest posts from young scholarly voices in the fields of musicology and Jewish Studies, including Simone Salmon's research on Sephardi music and the post-Ottoman diaspora, and Daniela Smolov Levy's five-part lecture series at UCLA on the role of Jews in opera. Other guest authors, to be announced, will contribute to the series, broadening its scope and opening up a network of diverse but interconnected musical worlds.
In addition to these topics, the series will often feature content that exposes artefacts of the pandemic period that continue to mediate between in-person and online experience. For instance, "Dispatches from Brooklyn" will offer ethnographic sketches of the multiple worlds of Jewish music in Brooklyn, NY, including cantorial lessons with elder cantors, the klezmer scene, and the world of Chassidic music.
As live music begins to blossom, with music venues and worship services returning, often modified as hybrid digital events, the "Conversations" series will continue to provide stories, sounds, and ideas meant to stimulate conversation, new listening, and debate about the life and meaning of American Jewish music. Whether it's the Kwartin Project, the Malavsky Family Choir, or the various guest authors, the series promises to be a vibrant exploration of the rich and diverse world of American Jewish music.
The "Conversations" series will not only delve into the Kwartin Project, focusing on the translation and analysis of Cantor Zawel Kwartin's autobiography, but will also expand its scope to include young scholarly voices in musicology and Jewish Studies, such as Simone Salmon's research on Sephardi music and the post-Ottoman diaspora.
Aside from these topics, the series will also incorporate content related to education and self-development, like Daniela Smolov Levy's five-part lecture series at UCLA on the role of Jews in opera, as well as online Learning opportunities that expose artefacts of the pandemic period and the blend of in-person and online experiences.
