Hi There, Many thanks for your quick response. George M Cohan's name is mentioned 8 times in the book THE JEWS OF TIN PAN ALLEY by Kenneth Aaron Kanter, so I presumed he was Jewish.
Regards Alf Keiles ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eliott Kahn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "World music from a Jewish slant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, April 21, 2003 8:28 PM Subject: Re: Cohan: not a Jew. > > > > > > >In conclusion, I'd say that not every great American Broadway/popular > >songwriter has to be Jewish. > > > Not every one was--there were Cole Porter and Harry Warren after all. > > But you must realize that Cohan was popular during the first decade of the twentieth century and was a fitting representative of the waves of Irish immigrants that preceded the Russian and Eastern European Jews (and Italians) that began trickling into America from ca. 1884. Cohan was preceded by the late nineteenth-century Harrigan and Hart shows, some of America's earliest "musical theatre." Of course some of the characters and situations in their shows had to do with Irish immigrants. > > There was a famous story, I believe from the early days of ASCAP, when Cohan introduced the young, up and coming Irving Berlin as a talented "Jew Boy." One shouldn't be too surprised at such behavior between two street smart immigrant groups, but--as I've mentioned previously--one should give people like Berlin credit for breaking down the ethnic barriers that he did. Purists frequently complain that people like Berlin and other assimilated Jewish songwriters should have written more "Jewish" or "ethnic" music. I'm sure if they wanted to work in the Yiddish Theatre like Sholom Secunda and Abe Ellstein they would have. > > I still maintain that the ground work of these assimilated songwriters made it possible for people to freely express themselves in a Jewish musical idiom today--as most of the people do on this list. Times change. But Berlin's commitment to "Americanizing" Jewish music and Jews did play well with the general population and made us far more acceptable as Americans. > > I suppose if there was one thing Berlin and many of these artists--as well as the entire movie industry--regretted, was that they could have been more vocal about helping their European cousins survive the Holocaust. But I'm afraid most Americans' actions on that account were sadly lacking. > > Eliott Kahn > > > ---------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------+ Hosted by Shamash: The Jewish Network http://shamash.org A service of Hebrew College, which offers online courses and an online MA in Jewish Studies, http://hebrewcollege.edu/online/ * * FREE JEWISH LEARNING * * Shamash invites you to join MyJewishLearning.com, a comprehensive, objective, authoritative and interactive learning resource in all areas of Judaism. Free membership via http://www.myjewishlearning.com/shamash ---------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------=
