Given the number of fantastic museums in Northern California and the dizzying variety of high-quality exhibits they routinely feature, I can be somewhat forgiven for having overlooked the latest attraction at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum.
Running through March 22, “Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations” explores a connection that, let’s face it, forged the very nature of 20th century American music. As the museum’s website explains, however, the exhibit offers a fresh perspective on that relationship.
In contrast to the oft-told story of how Jewish songwriters and publishers of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway transformed Black spirituals, blues and jazz into the Great American Songbook, scant attention has been paid to the secret history of the many Black responses to Jewish music, life and culture.
Suffice it to say, jazz plays a prominent role in the exhibit. To wit:
Beginning in the 1930s, the song “Eli Eli” – based on King David’s lament in the 22nd Psalm – became a staple for left-leaning progressives like Paul Robeson and a must-cover for Black artists like Duke Ellington and Ethel Waters.
Friendship and working relationships with Jews were the inspiration for several forays by Black artists into Yiddish jive. Cab Calloway was probably the best-known “Afro-Yiddishist,” mixing his own hepcat jive tongue-twisting with a constant flow of swinging Yiddishisms and spoofs on cantorial pyrotechnics with songs like the 1939 “Utt Da Zay.” By the 60s, artists like jazz and soul singer Marlena Shaw found particular resonance between post-Holocaust Jewish songs that expressed the desire for a promised land and the civil rights movement.
The Oscar-winning theme to the movie “Exodus” about the founding of Israel was covered by scores of Black artists – Jimmy Scott, Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton – who often saw the birth of Israel as a victory for the oppressed. Lena Horne’s incisive 1963 rant against civil rights abuses “Now!” was composed to the otherwise joyous tune of “Hava Nagila.” The eight year (1964-1972) Broadway run of “Fiddler on the Roof” turned the show’s music into a must-cover songbook for just about everyone with a record deal. The jazz saxophone legend Cannonball Adderley re-imagined the whole opus as swinging jazz instrumentals in 1964.
Who knew?
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