A right to sing the blues
Subtitle: African Americans, Jews, and American popular song
By: Jeffrey Melnick.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 277
Subjects: Popular music -- United States -- History and criticism; African Americans -- Music -- History and criticism; Jews -- United States -- Music -- History and criticism
Genres: Music
Description: "Black-Jewish relations," Jeffrey Melnick argues, has mostly been a way for American Jews to talk about their ambivalent racial status, a narrative collectively constructed at critical moments, when particular conflicts demand an explanation. Remarkably flexible, this narrative can organize diffuse materials into a coherent story that has a powerful hold on our imagination.

Melnick elaborates this idea through an in-depth look at Jewish song-writers, composers, and performers who made "Black" music in the first few decades of this century. He shows how Jews such as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, and others were able to portray their "natural" affinity for producing "Black" music as a product of their Jewishness while simultaneously depicting Jewishness as a stable white identity.

Moving beyond the narrow focus of advocacy group politics, this book complicates and enriches our understanding of the cultural terrain shared by African Americans and Jews.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-266) and index.