[Dixielandjazz] Re: Jews and Jazz

[Laurence Swain]

Timely!

PBS in Boston (WGBH-TV) at 8 o'clock tonight is carrying a program devoted to the same 
subject.

Perhap a PBS station in your area is doing the same.

This from the WGBH Web site:

    Great Performances
    From Shtetl to Swing 

    Between 1880 and 1924, 2.5 million Jews left their small-town "shtetls" in Russia 
    and Eastern Europe and emigrated to America. America would reshape Jewish 
    identity, and Jewish popular entertainment would change 20th-century American 
    music.

    Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Lorenz Hart, Benny Goodman, Al 
    Jolson, the Marx brothers, Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice, Molly Picon, Eddie Cantor, 
    Gene Krupa, Harold Arlen, Artie Shaw — these kids from New York's Lower East 
    Side all became cultural pioneers, shaking off their past yet taking full advantage of 
    their Yiddish musical heritage.

     What emerged was a cross-pollination of Jewish and African American musical 
    influences — two traditions born out of exile and longing, charged with energy and 
    humor. From Shtetl to Swing reveals how these musical heritages blossomed into a 
    new, diverse musical lexicon that gave voice to the American melting pot. Harvey 
    Fierstein hosts. 

Larry Swain