A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song

A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song - Paperback

$73.80
$73.80
Skip to product information
A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song
  • A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song
A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song - Paperback

A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song - Paperback

by Jeffrey Melnick
$73.80
$73.80

Book Overview

by Jeffrey Melnick (Author)

All too often an incident or accident, such as the eruption in Crown Heights with its legacy of bitterness and recrimination, thrusts Black-Jewish relations into the news. A volley of discussion follows, but little in the way of progress or enlightenment results--and this is how things will remain until we radically revise the way we think about the complex interactions between African Americans and Jews. A Right to Sing the Blues offers just such a revision.

"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 songwriters, 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. Melnick also contends that this cultural activity competed directly with Harlem Renaissance attempts to define Blackness.

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.
Number of Pages: 288
Dimensions: 0.61 x 9.21 x 6.14 IN
Publication Date: March 16, 2001
ISBN9780674005662
Author Jeffrey Melnick
PublisherHarvard University Press
GenreYoung adult
FormatPaperback
PublishedMarch 2001
LanguageENG- English
Pages288
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Young Adult Nonfiction Young Adults

1% fer Each of the Seven Seas

Every purchase sends 7% of our profits to The Ocean Cleanup. No fine print, no opt-in — just how we sail.

Whoever Ye Be, Welcome Aboard

Queer lit, music, art, philosophy, fiction — stories for every kind of soul. Come as ye are, matey.

More by Jeffrey Melnick

9/11 Culture: America Under Construction

9/11 Culture: America Under Construction - Paperback

9/11 Culture: America Under Construction - Paperback

By Jeffrey Melnick

About Jeffrey Melnick

Jeffrey Melnick is Associate Professor of American Studies at Babson College. He is author of two books on Black-Jewish relations: A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song (1999) and Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South (2000). Melnick is an active public speaker has appeared many times on local and national radio and television.

You may also like