subject: Major Influences On Jewish Music [print this page] Simultaneously because the folk revival made waves in Jewish worship, established composers like Gershon Kingsley and Raymond Smolover utilized contemporary genres like jazz and rock within their arrangements.
As with the larger world, the influence of rock music was debated but still is within some circles. Influence from the rock world found the Orthodox world with bands such as the Diaspora Yeshiva Band.
The Diaspora Yeshiva Band began around 1976 in the Diaspora Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Avraham Rosenblum on guitar, Ben Zion Solomon on fiddle and banjo, Simcha Abramson on saxophone and clarinet, Ruby Harris on violin, mandolin, guitar, and harmonica, Adam Wexler on bass, and Gedalia Goldstein on drums.
These were the originators of infusing rock 'n roll and bluegrass into modern Orthodox Jewish music. Their influence is transported to bands like Blue Fringe, Soul Farm, The Moshav Band, Reva L'sheva, Piamenta, Even Sh'siyah and much more.
Periodically Jewish music jumps into mainstream awareness, using the reggae artist Matisyahu being the newest example. The 2007 Grammy Honours were a landmark in Jewish music, because the Klezmatics (a klezmer/folk group) grew to become the very first Jewish band to win a Grammy. Their music combines lyrics by Woodsy Guthrie, the famous American lyricist, with classical klezmer tunes.
Inside the traditional Jewish community, cantoral and chasiddic tunes were the musical standard.
Within the nineteen fifties and early sixties tracks started to make of noncantorial Jewish music, starting with Benzion Shenker's recording from the music from the Modzitz chassidic sect and Cantor David Werdyger's Gerrer tracks. The annual Israeli Hasidic Song Festival, first locked in 1969, grew to become a stage which saw the premieres of pieces like Nurit Hirsh's Oseh Shalom Tzvika Pik's Sh'ma Yisrael and Shlomo Carlebach's Od Yishama and V'ha'eir Eineinu.
Using the founding from the State of Israel in 1948, American Jews demonstrated growing curiosity about Israeli music. This trend significantly faster using the Six-Day War.
"The concept of singing Israeli tunes in American synagogues, camps, and also at social events, which spread within the nineteen fifties, faster within the sixties and seventies as youthful American Jews looked to Israel as an optimistic model for Jewish identity, and also the songs' recognition also offered like a Jewishly unifying factor."
One more influence was at the pronunciation of Hebrew in worship and song. The Reform Movement, which formerly had used Ashkenazic pronunciation of Hebrew (reflecting a German-Polish tradition), switched to Sephardic pronunciation (reflecting the way in which Israelis spoke).
Largely affected with the folk music revival of occasions, inside the sixties and seventies, a completely new genre of worship music elevated in the Reform camping movement.
From almost the beginning of Reform worship, the music activity centred on using organ and choir. Instead of the paradigm of organ and choir, the completely new music was composed for guitar and group singing." This new style dedicated to making the music activity "simpler, completely democratic within the singability, largely Hebrew, and playable on guitar."
This influence may also be apparent inside the music of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Carlebach acquired fame for bridging involving the folk world as well as the traditional Jewish Hasidic tunes.
