Towards a Sociology of Israeli Musics

Transcription

1 1 Draft: Comments Invited Towards a Sociology of Israeli Musics By Judah Matras Hebrew University of Jerusalem University of Haifa Prepared for Presentation to First International Conference on Analytical Approaches to World Music University of Massachusetts Amherst February 20-21, 2010

2 2 Towards a Sociology of Israeli Musics By Judah Matras I. Introduction: Musics in Israel Attention to and discussion of Israel must inevitably mention and take note of the religious, ethnic, and geo-cultural origin heterogeneity of its population, present and past; and it virtually follows that attention to and discussion of music in Israel must mention and take note of the plurality of musics performed and heard in that country. In this paper I list the most prominently recognized among Israeli musics, consider what a sociology of Israeli musics should encompass, and indicate some central questions and hypotheses of a sociology of Israeli musics. Connected in large measure with the history of the Zionist project in Palestine and Israel, with the birth and formation of Israel as an independent state, with the large-scale migrations of Jews to the newly-independent state, and with the nationalist ideology accompanying these, discussion of the histories and development of musics in Israel has very frequently incorporated questions both about their integrative functions and qualities and about their roles in formulation and preservation of religious and ethnic identities. Although the diversity of musics has been very intensively studied and discussed there over a long period of time, it is by no means unique to Israel. Alongside their own distinctions between art or classical music and popular music, most Western societies are today, in effect, immigrant or migrant societies with large sectors of their populations of non-indigenous birth or parentage, sometimes retaining minority languages, each preserving, or indeed often developing and enhancing, musics associated with their linguistic, religious, ethnic, or geo-cultural origins and alongside gender, age, regional, and social class divisions. In this paper, I adopt the strategy advanced by Peter J. Martin in his recent book, Music and the sociological gaze. Art worlds and cultural production (2006) for pursuing the sociology of musics in Israel by study of a) their art worlds, i.e. the social organization of production and reception of musics, in the sense of Howard Becker (1982) and Ruth Finnegan (1989) and b) their functions and affordance, in the sense of Tia DeNora (2000, 2003), Simon Frith (1996a, 1996b), Christopher Small (1998), and Antoine Hennion (1997, 2001). For the most part I draw upon published descriptions and analyses, but introduce some new and previously unpublished Israel Labour Force Survey data by way of tentative examination of characteristics, educational attainments, and employment features of Israelis reporting musician as their main occupation. I draw primarily, though not exclusively, upon the classification of popular musics in Israel laid out by Motti Regev and Edwin Serrousi (2004) in their book, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel. I begin by presenting a tentative list of musics routinely performed and heard in Israel in live performances, available on records, cassettes, CDs, video-tapes, or DVDs for private

3 listening, broadcast on Israeli media (legitimate or pirate radio and TV), or in Israeliproduced films. In outline form, these are: 3

4 4 A.Western Art ( Classical ) Musics (which I shall frequently denote simply WAM. ) B. Popular (or: non-wam) Musics 1. Zionist-Project- Mobilized Hebrew Popular Music (Frequently denoted collectively as Songs of the Land of Israel or SLI) a. Work Songs b. Dance Tunes c. Nursery Rhymes and School Songs d. Romantic boy-girl songs e. Military service, Defense songs f. Choral music ( Zimriah ) g. Musical settings of Hebrew Poetry, Narratives, Biblical Motifs, Theatre 2. Popular Musics of Jewish Immigrant Groups, in Original Languages or in Hebrew Translation a. Yiddish and Ladino musics b. Slavic, Balkan, and Greek popular musics and dance c. Iraqi popular musics and dance d. Moroccan popular musics and dance e. Other North African popular musics and dance: Algeria, Tunisia f. Other Middle Eastern popular musics and dance: Yemenite, Kurdish, Afghani, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian g.. Russian popular music and dance h Other Eastern European popular musics and dance: Roumanian, Hungarian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian i. Ethiopian popular music and dance j. Other European and North American musics and dance (including UK and US Rock) 3. Post- Mobilized Hebrew-language Israeli Rock 4. Hebrew-language Middle Eastern or Mediterranean Rock (= Musiqa Mizrahit ) 5. Hebrew Religious Rock 6. Arab Rock C. Jazz and Blues D. Jewish Cantorial Musics 1. Ashkenazic Cantorial Music 2. Sephardic Cantorial Music E. Hebrew and Yiddish Hasidic Music F. Israeli and Palestinian Arab Art and Traditional Musics

5 5 G. Christian Liturgical Musics H. Musics of Foreign Workers: Thailand, Africa, Latin America, China, Eastern Europe I. Music Therapy Each of these musics has its music world, i.e. its social structure of participation and reception; and each has its constellation of functions and affordance for its participants whether patrons, creators, performers, audiences, or otherwise related. Western Art Music alone may be partitioned into a substantial number of sub-categories. Obviously it will not be possible to deal with each of these individually, just as it will not be possible to deal with each non-wam type and category individually in the paper. I shall be able to present data, primarily from censuses and surveys but also from historical, ethnographic, and anecdotal sources, to describe and analyze aspects of the music worlds, of the social organization of production and reception of some of the contemporary musics of Israel. Description and analysis of functions and affordance features and characteristics of Israel s contemporary musics will have to rest, for the time being, upon more speculative, less measurable, and less-readily replicable, often lessconvincing observations and interpretations by scholars of a variety of disciplinary origins and styles. In the paper I show that WAM, because of its history, prestige, and popularity among high-status European immigrants and their embourgeoisied offspring in Israel, and SLI, because of its Zionist symbols and folksong-like qualities, were both privileged musics, institutionally promoted and subsidized in earlier decades, even as others, competing musics, were discouraged. Recent commodification and marketing of musics, has led to much more variegated performance in private events, bars, cafes, and ratings-driven radio and TV; to distribution of recordings on locally-produced cassettes, records, and CDs; and to emergence of Israeli (Hebrew) Rock and Musiqa Mizrahit as the dominant musics in Israel. A prominent literary critic, Calderon (2009) views Israeli Hebrew Rock as the new Israeli cultural and political idiom, replacing literature and poetry. Decanonization of previously- mobilized SLI and enhanced scope for Rock and other non-wam musics, have liberated the thought, identities, and expression of older and younger generations alike (Regev, 1996, 1998). Finally I cite two parallel examples: In Israel some have viewed a) visual arts and b) certain academic disciplines --history, political science, sociology, archaeology, and others- - as having been mobilized in earlier decades by the Zionist rhetoric and priorities and only recently liberated, with painters or academics now pursuing post-zionist art or studies free of such constraints (Chinsky, 1993; Manor, 2005, Segev, 2002). Outside Israel, especially in certain societies of Central and Eastern Europe, musics perceived not fully consistent with the ideologies and directions of the regimes, and especially US- or UK-style Rock musics, had been tabooed and sometimes severely penalized, while other

6 6 musics had been mobilized in their support. Legitimation of Rock has frequently been associated with liberation of these societies (Ramet, 1994.) II. Music Worlds: Patrons, Musicians, Performances, and Audiences in Israel In Chart1, I show a list of conservatories and university departments of music in Israel, indicating their locations. The larger, better known, and more variegated institutions are of course in the larger cities: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, or in their satellite communities, especially in those surrounding Tel Aviv. But there are many smaller, local conservatories in the peripheral towns and communities, from Eilat at the southern extremity of Israel and Dimona in the Negev to Acre, Tiberias and UpperGalilee in the North. Altogether some 45 institutions are listed, which seems a large number for a total population of only about seven million. Overwhelmingly in the large cities, but in the peripheral communities as well, the emphasis in the instruction is upon training in proficiency in the traditional string, piano, wind, and percussion instruments and in study and performance of Western Art Music. But many of the conservatories offer instruction in non-western instruments, such as the oud, and opportunities for study and performance of non-wam musics, such as jazz, rock, Arab, klezmer, and others, whether in frontal or formal instruction or in ensembles initiated or instructed by faculty members. The web-sites of the conservatories are not standardized in their formats: They sometimes include the total numbers of students, sometimes the numbers at the different levels or different programs, often not at all. They may or may not include mention of the types of ensembles, choral groups, or performance activities supported; and so forth. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to estimate the numbers of students enrolled in the respective institutions nor to classify them by main types of musics which they are studying or in which they are engaged, nor of course to sketch or estimate the profiles and characteristics of the students entering or engaged in studies of the separate musics. Such an analysis must for now remain in the list of planned future studies. Chart 1 Here Musicians: Professional Composers and Performers In Table 1, I show previously unpublished Israel Labour Force Survey data to study personal and employment characteristics of Israeli musicians whom I have been able, tentatively, to classify as Highbrow and Lowbrow, to correspond, approximately, to being employed in WAM and Popular musics, respectively. The data are averages from successive LF Surveys from 1995 through 2007 and refer to survey respondents indicating that their primary employment is as musicians including a) composers, musicologists, chorus conductors, orchestra conductors, orchestra players, opera singers, conservatory teachers, private music teachers, or b) singers of light music, singers and similar occupations, arrangers, popular musicians, players in ensembles, accompanists, but unfortunately not including music teachers in elementary or secondary schools, and not including cantors or liturgical singers, neither of whom I was able to identify and study separately in the LF Survey data.. I imputed Highbrow and Lowbrow identities to

7 7 respondents in relations to these LF survey codings of (a) and (b) categories above, taking account also of their reported educational attainments and their geocultural (European or American birth or parentage, or Asian or African birth or parentage, respectively) origins. The estimated average numbers so employed total over the 12-year period, , about 16,500 and include about 10,500 and 6,000 Highbrow and Lowbrow musicians, respectively. The highbrow group comprises 74.5% males and 25.5% females, compared to 80.6% males and 19.4% females among the lowbrow category. Among the total number of musicians in our survey categories, about 51% were born in Israel, 49 % born abroad; but only 40% of the highbrow musicians, compared to 73 % among the lowbrow musicians, were born in Israel. Among those born abroad, those born in Russia and the Ukraine, about 3,400 or about 42% of the total born abroad, reflect the both large immigration from FSU countries and the high concentration of musicians among them; and the overwhelming majority (96%) of these are employed as Highbrow musicians. Table 1 Here Unfortunately the Labour Force statistics of musicians do not report the Israeli musics or combinations of musics in which they are employed; and even our distinction between Highbrow and Lowbrow musicians is based upon the code for the category of musical employment or activity which each individual Respondent in combination with information about the Respondent s schooling attainment and about her/his geo-cultural origins (birth or parentage). However reports of Respondents own or parental countries of birth can be helpful in guessing the musics in which they do (or, more likely, those in which they do not) engage or perform. We might expect persons born or with parental origins in Greece to perform Greek music; and in all events they are not so likely to perform Latin American or Yiddish or Ethiopian and Eastern African songs and musics. So that while we may retain some presumptions about the identities and characteristic of performers of the specific Israeli musics from Labour Force Survey data, we shall have to regard these as very speculative and approximate, at best, and to seek to supplement data and information from other sources as well. In Table 2 I show data from the LF Survey reporting places of birth for Highbrow and Lowbrow Israeli musicians born abroad and fathers place of birth for those born in Israel. Table 2 Here Israel and the Jewish community of pre-independence Palestine were historically immigrant societies and for most of its history the vast majority of Israel s adult Jewish population were immigrants. But more recently the adult population, Jewish and non-jewish alike, comprised persons born (and socialized, educated, and moving through all stages of the life course) in Israel. In Table 2 we may note that the majority of the musicians reported in our LF Survey are persons born in Israel. Those born in Israel comprise a large majority of the Lowbrow Musicians; and though a majority of Israeli-born musicians are classified here as Highbrow Musicians, and a substantial majority of the total number of Highbrow musicians in Israel were born abroad. Musicians born abroad comprise only a small minority of Lowbrow Musicians, as shown in the table. Among the Israeli-born Highbrow musicians, almost half are children of Israel-born fathers, while the children of immigrant parents are mostly of Eastern and Central European (especially: Polish, Romanian, Russian and German)

8 8 immigrant parents; but there are also substantial number of Latin American (Argentina and Brazil), of Moroccan, and of Bulgarian immigrant parents. Among the immigrant (foreign-born) Highbrow musicians, the overwhelming majority are from Russia or other FSU (Former Soviet Union) republics. This is consistent with a) our other knowledge of absorption of recent FSU immigrant professionals, artists, and musicians into employment in Israel and b) retirement or passing of the German- and other Central European-immigrant founders of the WAM tradition and education in Palestine and Israel (see Section III, part A. below). In addition, however, there are substantial numbers of Western European-, North and Latin American-, and even Chinese-immigrant Highbrow musicians employed in Israel.. Among the (average annual) close to 5400 reporting Musician as their main occupations in the LF Surveys and classified as Lowbrow (primarily other-than-wam musics), more than 75% (almost 4100) are persons born in Israel; and of these somewhat over one-third (about 1,400) are children of fathers themselves born in Israel, i.e Third+ Generation Israelis. Among sons and daughters of immigrant fathers, those of North African (Moroccan, Tunisian, and Libyan) parentage are numerically most prominent, followed by those of Russian, Polish, and Romanian parentage, and with large numbers of Iraqi and of Yemenite immigrants children among the Israeli-born Lowbrow musicians as well. Among Lowbrow musicians born abroad, there is representation of countries of origin absent from those reflected in the parentage of those born in Israel, for example: Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina in Latin America; some of the FSU republics; Italy and England. But the number of Lowbrow musicians born abroad is very much smaller than the number of Israeli-born. Altogether the data of Tables 1 and 2 are very suggestive, but less than entirely satisfactory. In the first place, the Highbrow (WAM) and Lowbrow (non-wam) classifications are partially-arbitrary, contingent to be sure on the respondents reporting of the categories of musicians, (a) or (b), as noted above; but also contingent on characteristics other than the musics in which they are engaged: geo-cultural origins crossclassified by educational attainment, whose exact correlations with their types of musics is surmised rather than measured. Secondly, there may well be sampling problems with respect to capture or representation of population groups which, though they may have distinctive musics, may be too small to have been captured or included in the sample surveys. Finally, the LF Survey definitions of Musicians may exclude representation of important Israeli musics insofar as a) their main practitioners may be outside the Labour Force or may be engaged in primary employment in occupations other than music, or b) their practitioners may be elsewhere identified and classified, as in the case of music teachers in primary or secondary school, or as in the case of religious functionaries. There are no musicians born in Iraq shown in the LF Survey data, although the immigration from Iraq was very large and very prominent in Israel, and we know of Iraqiborn musicians and ensembles, and of Iraqi-Jewish music performed in Israel continuously following the initial immigration in the early 1950s. Again, it is possible that the Iraq-born musicians never were exclusively or even primarily employed as musicians; it is possible

9 9 that the Musicians among them, in the definition of the Survey, are now retired or no longer alive, or that those still surviving are too few to be captured and represented in the sample of the LF Survey. Thus, for example, we know about the performance of Ethiopian music in pubs and bars and in private celebrations; but there is no example of a Jewish Ethiopian musician, either born abroad or born in Israel of Ethiopian-immigrant parentage, in the LF Survey. Similarly, we know about Thai music routinely performed among Thai agricultural workers in Israel and of Filipino music performed among Filipino caregiver and other employees, but there is no representation of Thai origin nor of Filipino origin musicians in the LF Survey. We know of extensive Israeli Arab musical composition and performance, but we know also that the greater part of Arab music is composed and performed by persons by persons and ensembles earning their livelihoods other than by music (Cohen and Katz, 1977; Regev, 1994b); and indeed our Labour Force Survey shows very few Arab Musicians, too few for inclusion in analysis. Patronage and Audiencing. Israeli musical and social scientific scholarship has frequently treated popular music as essentially a deviation from WAM, which traditionally captured the bulk of attention. But in their pioneering study, The Secularization of Leisure, Katz and Gurevitch (1976) showed that, of the entire Israeli population with five years or more of formal schooling, only 11 percent reported attending a concert in the half-year preceding their survey, including only 22 percent of those with 11 or more school years achieved. Of Israelis born in Europe or America (EA) or born in Israel of EA parentage, about 20 percent reported concert attendance, compared to only about 3 1/2 half percent born in Asia or Africa (AA) or born in Israel of AA parentage, including less than seven percent among those of AA birth or origin who had completed 11 or more school years. Overall, while only about 2% reported listening to or attending classical music concerts weekly, about three times that percentage reported listening to popular music weekly. The most comprehensive description of cultural, including musical taste, preferences in Israel was carried out in 1990 by Katz and associates in their analysis of leisure culture in Israel (Katz et. al., (1992), which updated and expanded the pioneering investigation by Katz and Gurevitch (1976). In this important study the authors address a lengthy list of issues including selected institutional and values changes; time budgets; Sabbath, weekend and holiday, and daily leisure and recreational practices; reading and media preferences and practices; cultural including musics supply and offerings, expressed musical taste preferences; and actual musical patronage and consumption of Israeli adults generally and of selected sub-populations and categories. With respect to Israeli musics, Katz et. al. present data on and discussion of audiencing, sponsorship and initiatives, venues, and social status associated musical events and activities, reflecting Israeli music worlds. As well, and anticipating recent sociological discussion, they were able to specify some of the functions and affordances imputed to popular musics by respondents, even if not in the detail to which the list of Israeli Musics would aspire (Katz, et. al, 1992, Table B-18). I will have later occasion, in Section III, to cite this study of functions and affordances.

10 10 According to the Katz et al (1992) findings, the percentages in the adult population expressing high or very high preferences to the different musics (in their categories) listed were, in 1990, as follows: Classical Musics Classical Music (WAM) 32% Jazz 16% Folk Musics: Songs of the Land of Israel (SLI) 70% Songs of Various Countries 29% Cantorial Music, Hasidic Music, Yiddish Songs 23% Popular Musics: Current Foreign Rock or Pop 21% Israeli Rock or Pop 29% Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) Musics: Current Mizrahi Music (in Hebrew) 26% Songs of Oriental Ethnic Groups 30% Arabic Music 7% Obviously these preferences are not mutually exclusive. As Katz and colleagues point out, there were substantial age-group, educational-attainment, ethnic-origins and ethnicidentity differences in these patterns evident in the data for 1990, and these are in many ways already indicative of later patterns of preferences and in audience composition, some of which are discussed in more detail in the paper. I reproduce these data from the Katz et al studies, including details by age of respondents and by ethnic identification crossclassified by educational attainment in Appendix Tables A and B and mention some of these details only briefly here. In all population subgroups: in all age groups, among all the self-identified ethnic groups, and among those with either less-than-full secondary, with secondary, or with postsecondary educational attainments the Songs of the Land of Israel, is the most frequently-reported musical preference. In all population subgroups investigated by Katz and colleagues in 1990, only among those in the youngest age group, 20-29, did fewer than 67% indicate this preference; and even among the youngest age group the proportion reporting preference of Songs of the Land of Israel (57%) exceeded by far the proportions reporting preferences of other music categories. By contrast, only in the oldest (50+) age group, only among those of European or American (or, in the highest, postsecondary, educational attainment group: those reporting No Ethnicity ), was Classical Music to be a preferred music, and never by more than 46% of respondents in the group. It is not exactly clear just what, in the Katz et al survey, differentiates the Nostalgia, Songs of the 1950s, 1960s category from the universally-popular Songs of the Land of Israel category (possibly the so-called canonization of the latter, which will be discussed below), but the Nostalgia category is also extensively noted as a preference, though somewhat less so among the youngest respondents and somewhat less so among Asian and

11 11 African-origin respondents with either less-than-secondary- or more-than-secondary-school attainments. The Songs, Musics of Different Countries category is moderately popular, more prominently among those aged and among Asian and African-origin respondents with secondary school or less educational attainments. The Cantorial, Hasidic and Yiddish music category (an unfortunate combining of distinctly different musics into a single category) is reported as preferred primarily among older (50+) and among European or American-origin respondents with less than secondary education. Over 29% of the respondents reported preferences for Israeli Rock or Pop and 23% for Foreign Rock or Pop musics; but these percentages were notably higher among younger respondents (37% and 48% respectively among respondents aged years, substantially less among older respondents. See Appendix Tables A and B) and both least popular among respondents reporting European or American origins (EA) ethnicity, more popular among those reporting Asian or African (AA; very frequently denoted Mizrahi or Eastern or Oriental) ethnicity or no ethnicity., more popular with those completing secondary school than with either those of lesser school attainment or with those with postsecondary attainments. Contemporary Hebrew Eastern Music (Musiqa Mizrahit) is overwhelmingly popular among AA ethnicity respondents, much less frequently reported as preferred among non-aa-ethnic respondents, almost entirely absent (only 4%) in the responses of EA-ethnicity respondents who completed at least some post-secondary (13+years) schooling. No less prominent is the AA-ethnicity respondents support of Songs of (Jewish) Oriental Groups, typically more traditional songs of the Jewish preimmigration Oriental communities, sometimes but not necessarily in modern Hebrew language. Respondents of the other ethnic groups ( EA or none ) more frequently report preferences for this category than for the Musiqa Mizrahit category above; but the main interest in and support for this music remains primarily among the AA-ethnicity respondents. Some respondents of AA-ethnicity with less-than-completed-secondaryschool educational attainment (about 29% of the total) report preferences for Arabic music, but otherwise there is very little report of such preferences. In the Katz el al study, report of preferences for Jazz are surprisingly infrequent overall (about 17% of the total), are slightly higher among younger-than-middle-aged (20-29 and years) compared to the older (50+) respondents but otherwise not varying greatly among the different sub-populations (Appendix Tables A and B). More recent studies of music preferences and audiencing in Israel have been carried out by Katz-Gerro and Shavit (1998), by Katz-Gerro, Raz, and Yaish (2007, 2009), and Yaish and Katz-Gerro (forthcoming). Using survey data collected in the first quarter of 1992 and a variant of Erikson-Goldthorpe class categories, applied to Israel, Katz-Gerro and Shavit (1998) found significant class differences in style of life (including tastes and consumption of highbrow versus lowbrow music) net of the ethnic and religiosity variation previously studied. They found, also, that highbrow and lowbrow tastes in music are not necessarily mutually exclusive, i.e. the omnivore phenomenon; but that the upper class nonetheless shows notably greater consumption of highbrow music. Using survey data collected in 2006 and in 2007, and a new Israeli Status Scale based on a multidimensional scaling procedure, Katz-Gerro, Raz, and Yaish studied variations in musical taste preferences, in actual consumption or attendance at music events, and intergenerational

12 12 transmission of musical tastes. Among their main findings are that social status plays a more important role than social class in shaping highbrow vs. lowbrow musical tastes, that parental social position is a more important factor in determining musical tastes than respondents own social position, and that cultural participation or actual attendance at events is constrained by both tastes and economic resources, while tastes themselves are constrained by cultural resources but not by income. (2007, and forthcoming). Katz-Gerro, Raz, and Yaish have very kindly provided data from their surveys to allow description of socio-demographic profiles of audiences of some of the major musics in Israel. In Table 3, I show more recent data on audiencing of musics in Israel based, on the one hand, on survey respondents reports of musical tastes and preferences, and, on the other hand, on respondents reports of actual patronage of or attendance at musical events. Table 3 here In Table 3, I show socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics of respondents who indicated relatively frequent attendance at or participation in ( patronage ) five categories of musical events in Israel as identified by Katz-Gerro, Raz, and Yaish: 1) Classical Music Concerts or Operas; 2) Rock or Pop Concerts; 3) Songfests or Community Sings; 4) Musical Theatre; or 5) Other Musical Performances. In the survey respondents were asked to report frequency of participation during the past 12 months, on a scale of 1) never; 2) once or twice; 3) three or four times; 4) once in two months; or 5) at least once each month. Those responding three or four times, once in two months, or at least once each month were grouped as patrons of that category, and these are shown for the five separate categories in Table 3. Obviously the five categories cannot represent all of the Israeli musics in which we are interested separately, but they do distinguish between WAM and non-wam patronage and are at least suggestive of other distinctions. In the table I show only the percentages Married and Single and not other reported marital statuses: Separated, Divorced, or Widowed. Because of varying sex-agespecific rates of mortality, survival, widowhood, and re-marriage, middle-aged and older men are more likely to report being married than are women who, in turn, are more likely to report being widowed. In the table I also show ethnicity as subjectively-reported by respondents in accordance with their perceived identities or associations, rather than more objective countries of birth of the respondents, their parents, or grandparents. We estimate that approximately two-thirds of those reporting Israeli ethnicity would be reported as having Asian or African (or Mizrahi ) geo-cultural origins if the reporting would be objectively-based upon own or parental countries of birth. Classification of Religious Observance is also based upon respondents own subjective choices and responses among the five alternative categories as shown in the table and not on any objective behavioral criteria. Although their percentages and numbers of patrons reported in the survey are surprisingly close, the greatest socio-demographic and socio-economic contrasts are those between the patrons of Classical Music Concerts or Operas (WAM, in col. 1 of Table 3) and those of Rock or Pop Concerts (in col.2 of Table 3). The WAM patrons are older, primarily married, include a large proportion born abroad and immigrating in late teens or early adulthood, relatively highly-educated, overwhelmingly of Ashkenazi ethnicity, and

13 13 include a non-trivial fraction or religiously orthodox or ultra-orthodox, though in common with the Rock or Pop Concerts patrons are about equally divided between males and females. The Rock or Pop Concerts patrons are much younger, largely single, overwhelmingly Israel-born with those born abroad immigrating at very young ages, with relatively modest probably often not-yet-completed educational attainments, with a substantial though not overwhelming Mizrahi ethnic component, and mostly Secular and Non-Observant, with but very few orthodox and no ultra-orthodox members. The Songfests and Community Sings category of musical events, in common with Classical and Opera (WAM) events has relatively older (Median Age = 56) patrons, but it is numerically dominated by women, including many single women, includes a substantially larger percentage born or socialized in Israel (with those born abroad reporting having immigrated at very young ages, largely in childhood) and a substantially larger percentage of Mizrahi ethnicity. The Other Musical Performances category includes approximately the same percentage and number of patrons as does the Songfests, etc. but younger, with a small percentage of females, and with relatively large percentages of Mizrahi ethnicity and of Ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox religious observance. The Other Musical Performances category is not itself specific enough to offer any explanation of its composition; but, anticipating data shown in the following Table 4, it is possible that this category includes patrons of performances of Religious, Cantorial, Hasidic, Liturgical musics whose Selectors share some compositional characteristics with the Patrons shown here of the Other Musical Performances category. In Table 4, I show socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics of respondents who responded either like, enjoy, savor or like, enjoy, savor very much to questions about their feelings, thoughts, or preferences concerning twelve musics or categories of music (identified by Katz-Gerro, Raz, and Yaish, corresponding roughly to the categories identified by E. Katz and associates) currently performed and heard in Israel: 1) Classical Music 2) Dance/Electronic Music (generally: DJ-constructed) 3) Blues, Jazz 4) Pop 5) Rock (including Heavy Rock, Progressive or Advanced Rock) 6) Latino, Salsa 7) Opera 8) Hip Hop, Rap 9) Hebrew Music, Contemporary Israeli Music 10) Songs of the Land of Israel 11) Musica Mizrahit and Mediterranean Music 12) Religious Music [Cantorial, Hasidic, Liturgical musics, etc.}. I denoted as Selectors those responding favorably or indicating preferences for these respective musics, as above; and thus the table shows characteristics of Selectors of each of the respective musics or categories, 1 to 12. Again: obviously the twelve categories cannot represent all of the Israeli musics in which we are interested separately, but they do distinguish between WAM and non-wam selection and are at least suggestive of other

14 14 distinctions among the musics. Notes and qualifications to characteristics of Selectors in Table 4 are similar to those for Patrons of Table 3 above. Table 4 here In Table 4 (twelve columns on two pages) we may confirm, first of all (what we already know from the analyses of Katz-Gerro, Raz, and Yaish) that, out of the same sample of respondents, the numbers asserting enjoyment, liking, preferences for the respective genres of music are very much larger than the numbers reporting actual patronage of and participation in musical events. Thus three fourths of the respondents report enjoyment or savoring of Hebrew, Contemporary Israeli music, almost two-thirds favor the Songs of the Land of Israel genre, and more than two-fifths express approval or Classical Music, though no more that 10% or so reported actually attending performances or participating in songfests or community sings. Thus the distinction, first made implicitly by Elihu Katz and colleagues (1992) and more recently analyzed in detail by Katz-Gerro, Raz, and Yaish, (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) between tastes for and consumption of music and other cultural items is very fundamental in Israel, and probably elsewhere very generally as well. Our Selectors are audience perhaps not less than are our Patrons, both parts of our sociological Music Worlds; but they are not equivalent. The Selectors of the Classical Music and Opera (WAM) genres depicted in Table 4 show many similarities to the Patrons of Classical Music Concerts and Operas shown earlier (in Table 3): both are substantially older (especially the Opera Selectors) than other Selectors represented, have relatively high percentages married both among the men and among the women, both have large numbers of persons born abroad (again: especially the Opera Selectors) and immigrating at late teen or adult ages, both numerically dominated by Ashkenazi ethnic members --- though substantially greater inclusion of Mizrahi Selectors than was evident among the Patrons, and both with higher median school attainment than other groups of Selectors shown in the Table. Most of these characteristics are shared by Selectors of the Blues, Jazz music genre as well. The most dramatic contrast is provided by the Selectors of the Hip Hop, Rap category which is the youngest of all the Selector groups (Median Age = 30), has large components both of Single Males and of Single Females, the largest Born-in-Israel component (78%) and a small immigrant component schooled virtually entirely in Israel, relatively low schooling attainments (representing, probably, still-uncompleted schooling) and, except for the Musiqa Mizrahit and Religious, Cantorial, Hasidic groups, contains the largest percentage of Mizrahi persons. The size of this group is small, but its composition is distinctive and I will have occasion to mention both performers and consumers of Hip Hop and Rap again later in the paper. A somewhat similarly distinctive group of Selectors is the Dance, Electronic Music group, also small, relatively young and unschooled, but with somewhat more married men and women and altogether numerically dominated by men, rather than with female majorities as characterize all the other Selector groups shown in Table 4. The Selectors of the Rock and related types shown in Table 4 deviate quite markedly from the Rock or Pop Concert Patrons described in Table 3. Aside from there being numerically many more Selectors than Patrons, the latter were seen to be

15 15 younger, male-dominated, largely Single, almost entirely born and schooled in Israel, and heavily Secular, non-observant with very very little Orthodox and no Ultra-Orthodox members compared to the larger, older, female-dominated Selectors of this category. The substantial number (almost 42%, of more than 400 in the sample) expressing preference or favor for the Latino, Salsa is certainly greater and socio-demographically broader that the Latin-American immigrant and immigrant offspring subpopulation in Israel. But the most prominent feature of this Selector group is that it is heavily dominated by females, about two-thirds compared to only one-third males. Almost all of the other Selector groups have female majorities, but none as dramatically so as the Latino-Salsa group. Those reporting favorably on the Pop Music category are choosing what is essentially foreign, perhaps mostly Western European and American popular music as a favored genre. This group of Selectors is less than half as large, but otherwise very similarly composed sociodemographically and socio-economically to the Selectors of the Hebrew, Contemporary Israeli Music which indeed may be seen as Israeli counterpart of the Pop Music category. Their percentages Male and Female total, as well as the percentages Married and Single and Males and Females respectively are very similar as are levels of schooling, percentages born in Israel and abroad, ethnicity, and religious observance compositions. A single difference is that the Selectors of the Hebrew, Contemporary Israeli Music category are, on the average about three years older than those of the Pop Music genre. And, again, the former group is very much larger, indeed the largest of all the Selector groups shown, including more than three-fourths of the total sample respondents. The next largest Selector group, that choosing Songs of the Land of Israel, includes almost twothirds of the sample respondents, surely overlaps partly with the larger Hebrew, Contemporary Israeli Music Selector group, and share many profile characteristics, including over gender composition, schooling, ethnicity composition, and religious observance composition. But the Songs of the Land of Israel group is notably older, includes more immigrants, and has relatively more married and fewer single men and relatively fewer single women (probably more widows) than the Hebrew, Contemporary Israeli Music group of Selectors. The Songs of the Land of Israel themselves are songs of a certain proven durability and with histories of mobilization and canonization, as I shall be noting again later in the paper, while the Contemporary Israeli Music, is indeed contemporary, in competition with not-specifically-israeli Pop Music as well as with the long-standing status, privilege, and halo-surrounded Songs of the Land of Israel, very likely more familiar to the older-on-average Selectors of that genre. As has been widely noted both in the Israeli context (Cohen and Shiloah, 1985; Regev and Seroussi, 2004) and in a broader Mediterranean basin context (Stokes, 1994,) and will be noted again below, Israeli Musiqa Mizrahit or Oriental or Mediterranean music has only recently emerged from a long struggle for legitimacy and status in the panorama of Israeli popular or non-wam musics. As Stokes expressed it, Israeli Rock Mizrahi was an example of an oriental other (akin to Greek Rebetike, Turkish Arabesk, Andalusian Flamenco) which is highly subversive in the contexts of official nationalist discourses which explicitly reject the internal orients as aspects of a backward past. (Stokes, 1994, p. 16).

16 16 Currently its advocates and producers, composers, performers, and listeners may choose it much more comfortably than in the not-so-distant past; and in the sample survey whose results have been used here, more than 37% of the respondents selected Musiqa Mizrahit which they like, enjoy, savor or like, enjoy, savor very much rendering them Selectors of the Musiqa Mizrahit, Mediterranean Music category, shown in the penultimate column of Table 4. The distinctive feature of the Selector group is the numerical domination by the Mizrahi ethnicity group, 52% (and, recalling earlier mention of the likely objective ethnic composition of the Israeli Ethnicity group: probably an additional Mizrahi, or Asian-African, origin percentage of 14-15% reporting themselves as of Israeli ethnicity ) This group of Selectors has somewhat lower school attainments, but also very substantially more Orthodox and Traditional, fewer Secular, non- Observant members than all but the last of the Selector groups. The Selectors of the Religious, Cantorial, Hasidic musics category include a relatively high percentage of Marrieds and low percentage of Singles among the Males, low percentage Single but not especially-high percentage of Married among the Females, very high percentages of Mizrahi ethnicity, and high levels of religiosity reflected in high percentages of ultra-orthodox and orthodox, and very low percentage of Secular, nonobservant, Selectors. This group of musics is, on the face of it, fairly homogeneous in that all these musics have some orthodox-religious associations, if not necessarily all with religious messages and motifs. But in fact the genre is fairly heterogeneous, possibly numerically marginal in volume of musical events, composers, performers, and perhaps marginal in the size of total audience. But the group includes not only musics performed in concerts or in smaller public venues such as bars and pubs and community centers; but, rather, it includes prayer settings such as synagogues, churches, and private prayer events, as well as celebration ceremonies of varying types and sizes such as weddings, life cycle events (such as communion and bar mitzvah, christenings and circumcisions, burials and remembrance, graduations and house-warmings, religious and secular holidays) and the participants can include cantors and klezmers, choirs and soloists, clergymen and laymen, and their respective role-specific musics. Even as we inquire in a survey about approval or selection of this Religious, Cantorial, Hasidic category of musics, we have not actually yet found it possible to enumerate completely the specific musics which it encompasses. The census- and survey-type data available for description and analyses of Israeli Music Worlds, the social organization of production and reception of Israeli music, are illuminating and useful but limited in various ways, coverage, and details of the specific Israeli musics listed initially. Hopefully we shall later be able supplement these by drawing upon what I tend to call music-specific data and insights: biographical, historical, anecdotal- and ethnographic-based observations and information on musicians, patronage, and audiencing in Israel.

17 17 III. Functions and Affordances of Israeli Musics A. Western Art Music (WAM) Western Art Music in Israel: The Israeli music, performers, and composers known and recognized outside of Israel have long been predominantly those associated with Western Art Music (which we shall denote hereinafter as WAM). The outstanding careers and world fame of Israeli-born or Israeli-trained performers and conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Netanya Davrat ( ), Itzhak Perlman, Yoav Talmi, Yefim Bronfman, Pinchas Zuckerman, Gary Bertini ( ), Shlomo Mintz, Eleyahu Inbal and others, the success and reputation and worldwide appearances of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and of other Israeli orchestras and chamber ensembles have contributed to Israel s reputation as an emerging center of WAM outside the familiar geographical confines of Europe and North America. The prominence of Israeli WAM-oriented music conservatories and international successes of their students, foundation of departments of music and musicology in Israeli universities, and relative privileging of WAM in Israeli radio broadcasting, and not-inconsiderable successes of WAM-trained Israeli composers have all been factors in the status of classical music in Israel. (151 words) Not unlike its historical origins in the United States, WAM was brought to Palestine primarily by Central European (mostly German, but also Austrian, Czech, and Hungarian) Jewish immigrants prior to Israeli Independence in 1948, reproducing their country-oforigin musical practices and preferences and commitments in the new migrant community settings, as far as possible. This process has been documented in considerable detail by Bohlman (1989), Gradenwitz (1996, Chapters 13-15), Cohen (1990), and Ohad (1986). Subsequent waves of Jewish immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and, especially, from the former Soviet Union (FSU) in the 1990s decade, were also characterized by very high levels of WAM literacy and participation, including but not restricted to immigrants who, in their origin communities, were composers, professional performers, musicologists, teachers and students of music. In Israel these continued, renewed, or fortified their pre-immigration musical practices, interests, studies, and commitments and energized the Israeli classical (WAM) music scene to new heights of activity and achievements. (Rothstein, NY Times, 1994). Israeli composers, performers, and audiences of WAM have been largely of European or American birth or origin and, for the most part, WAM musicians have been persons completing post-secondary education and employed full-time as musicians, benefiting in no small measure from the privileged position of WAM in public support and patronage. Though there have been innumerable efforts to introduce Eastern or Oriental melodies, themes, or motifs into Israelicomposed WAM, there seems as yet no indication of widespread attraction or inclusion of persons of Asian or African birth or origins, nor of Arabs, regardless of educational

18 18 attainments, either in the audiences of WAM or in the ranks of musicians engaged in production, composition, or performance of WAM in Israel. And there is no measure of effects of Easternization of Israeli-composed WAM upon audiences, Israeli or other. Bohlman (1989) has noted the centrality of the concept of Bildung, the spirit of enlightened humanism that had come to drive the dynamo of German-Jewish society at the time of emancipation in the nineteenth century, as represented and afforded both to the Central European immigrant community and to other Israeli classical music participants alike. Bohlman writes, for example, about chamber music repertory and performance in Israel: Standard works come from an historical period stretching from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, roughly parallel to the period framed by Bach and Beethoven, the dyad fundamental to Carl Dahlhaus s notion of absolute music It was a period when the (Central European Jewish) community first discovered new promise and philosophical resonance in Bildung. Just as Bildung became a sort of secular religion to many Central European Jews, so too did the music of the Classic and early Romantic periods acquire a deeper cultural significance: in essence this repertory was one of the means whereby Jews could declare full and willing participation in the traditions of Western culture. (Bohlman, 1989, pp Cf. Botstein, 1985) Bohlman, and even more Christopher Small, and others have noted, indeed stressed the ritual facets of musical events: the sacred nature and status of Western Art Music and the ritualized behaviors of performers and audiences at musical events. (Bohlman, especially Introduction and Chap.10, for WAM in Israel; Small, 1998, pp , pp for the views of music and art as ritual generally and of musicking as sacred performance and interpretation, and as representations of human relationships..). Bohlman asserts (1985) that for Central European mostly German and Germanspeaking immigrants, WAM defined and preserved their ethnic identities and values in a frequently estranged and sometimes hostile Palestinian Jewish community setting. Bohlman himself is not an Israeli and not a resident of Israel. Rather, he is a German- Jewish ethnomusicologist and he studied the Central European immigrant group and its musical traditions and activity as a visitor doing fieldwork in Israel in and briefly in In a semi-autobiographical work, Israeli music critic, impresario, and sometime head of the classical music arm of the Israeli public radio service, Michal Smoira-Cohen, reports a conversation with her former teacher, Oedoen Partos, violist, composer, teacher, performer, and promoter of contemporary (20 th Century) music virtually all of his professional career (Bahat, 1984), at his sickbed near the close of his life. On arrival she found him listening to music with earphones, which she did not interrupt. But at the close of the work to which he was listening, he reported that he had been listening exclusively to Beethoven quartets, which he described as soul-healing (Smoira-Cohen, 1997, p.150). In this book, Smoira- Cohen herself is critical of contemporary WAM asserting that it has foregone melody and scales altogether, in favor of clever and novel theory whose musical outcomes, however, are unpleasant and generally rejected by contemporary WAM audiences who systematically prefer older musics, whether ancient, renaissance, baroque, classical, or romantic. She extends these observations and this argument greatly in a subsequent book (Smoira-Cohen and Shmueli, 2007).