Pulse Check on Jewish Music in America, JDub's Founder Talks on Fifth Anniversary

As JDub Records celebrates its fifth anniversary (including a free concert July 20 at Prospect Park's bandshell, Brooklyn, NY), we check the pulse of Jewish music in America with JDub founder Aaron Bisman.

1. What are the newest aspects of Jewish music to emerge in the last five years?

The embrace of modern American music as a valid component of Jewish expression has led to Klezmer punk, Eastern European infused hip hop, Sepharic indie rock, and Hasidic reggae. Jewish music is nothing if not the appropriation of diasporic host cultures mixed with the traditions Jews carried from their previous homelands. This progression was stifled over the last 40 years in America, but beginning in 2002, we began to see a new emergence of uniquely Jewish sounds in these genres that had never before gained much prominence.

2. What was the need that made you start JDub?

I was studying music business at NYU. A friend, Ben Hesse, was working on a musical project that brought Hasidic and original Jewish melodies into electronica and heavily sampled music environments. The project inspired us to look around to see what else like this might be out there and who was working with it. While we immediately found a few other artists (Socalled, for instance), we found no organization or structure. We hypothesized that young Jews, our friends, and peers, might be interested in Jewish music in popular genres if it was really good music and if it was performed in mainstream music venues. So we decided to create an organization that could help artists do that.

3. Why do you think Klezmer is getting less and less overage in the mainstream media?

The Klezmer revival began in the late 1970s with the Klezmorim and then in the late 80s with the Klezmatics. Even though it wasn’t until 2007 that the Klezmatics were recognized with a World Music Grammy, Klezmer has been working its way into American folk culture for over 20 years. American Judaism has leaned heavily towards explorations of Eastern European Jewish culture, but today we’re seeing an explosion of Israeli and Sephardic Jewish culture here as well. Jews, after all, are a tiny percentage of America’s population. We can’t expect one particularly Jewish genre to continue to secure media coverage if there is not innovation of market impact. An artist has to make their case for their uniqueness today, their place in larger music trends, etc. I think Klezmer or Klezmer fusion bands can definitely do this but if the media feels the story has been told too many times already, it makes it a harder sell.

4. What’s the next big thing that will happen in Jewish music?

Israeli and Sephardic music. More interaction with other world musics and mainstream American musicians.

5. Why is JDub a nonprofit? How common is this model for a label? What are the advantages and disadvantages of running as a nonprofit?

We started JDub because we wanted to develop proud, authentic Jewish culture. But culture can not be nurtured if profit is the final motive. We also wanted to find ways to build community around this culture. While it is vital that our artists be able to earn their living as musicians, as the label and producers behind their artistic endeavors, if we were looking first to our bottom line, we’d be looking for easy money in kitsch and novelty. We had no interest in this. An additional problem with a for profit model was looking at the size of the immediate market – young Jews in America – it’s an incredibly small niche, and not one that we believed could support a value driven arts company as a for profit. We do not believe our cultural and communal mission is financially viable on its own, which is why mainstream record companies and promoters were not already in this business before JDub existed. We feel JDub finds its place alongside other arts not-for-profits dedicated to producing value-driven content to strengthen and develop a particular demographic – such as Alvin Ailey Dance Company or Celebrate Brooklyn.