JE on Music Theory Print

Jerk (music genre)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Writing for British magazine The Face, music journalist Kieran Press-Reynolds described jerk as “fidgety rhythms, staggered snares and mangled vocals”, and noted that a variety of jerk rappers “boast” but also showcase “a quirky and sensitive lyrical undercurrent that tends to lurk beneath the tough-guy facade”. he never listened to the original wave of jerk rap and is more inspired by Milwaukee hip-hop’s lowend scene in his “percussion choices”.

Jerkin'

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

According to Oktane of Audio Push, jerkin’ culture came from gang members dancing at parties, stating: “Jerking actually came from gang-banging. Like, it was a dance that gang members did. Like, the anti-dance. If you were in the party and everyone was dancing, the gang members would be doing the jerk.” The dance itself consists of moving your legs in and out called the “jerk”, and doing other moves such as the “reject”, “dip”, and “pindrop”.

Jersey club

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Style and characteristics#

Jersey club has been described as a “fast and aggressive dance music” with roots in the Baltimore club scene’s fusion of house music and hip-hop. 808 bass sounds and sampled breakbeats from Lyn Collins’ “Think (About It)” are commonly employed, as well as varied pop culture references. DJ Sliink summarized it as “a more urban take to dance music with chopped vocals and breaks.”

Origins: 1999–2002#

Club or house music has a long history in Newark, home to the older New Jersey sound electronic genre. Chicago house was popular in Newark’s 1990s club scene, where it was referred to generically by some as “club music.” DJ Tameil, who became known for his Chicago house mixtapes as a teenager, later established connections with the Baltimore scene; he was subsequently introduced to Baltimore stars such as DJ Technics and Rod Lee. Tameil did not put artist names on his mixes, making it difficult for other Jersey producers to identify his sources. He began playing Baltimore records at teen parties and clubs in the downtown Newark area. Tameil was among the first Jersey artists to produce his own club tracks in 2001 with the Dat Butt EP, released on his own label Anthrax Records. A week later the Newark group The OG’s also self-released an EP titled Official Ghetto Style. Tameil began to burn his own CDs and sold them on Broad Street in Newark. Around this time, DJs Tim Dolla and Mike V also began producing their own club tracks as the Brick Bandits to challenge Tameil’s monopoly on the market. The two parties initially feuded but Tameil later joined the group, coining the phrase “Brick City club” in 2002 in reference to Newark’s nickname “Brick City.” They released popular mixtapes which featured both club and house tracks. Club parties, hosted primarily in ballrooms and banquet halls, began emerging in Newark and surrounding suburbs such as East Orange and Irvington. Despite violence in the city, parties thrown by the Brick Bandits or at the Branch Brook Skating Rink were known to be safe spaces for kids.

Jesus music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Jesus music primarily began in population centers of the United States where the Jesus movement was gaining momentum—Southern California (especially Costa Mesa and Hollywood), San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago—around 1969–70. Large numbers of hippies and street musicians began converting to born-again Christianity. A number of these conversions, especially in southern California, were due largely to the outreach of Lonnie Frisbee and Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. was a blend of folk music and folk rock (Children of the Day, Paul Clark, Nancy Honeytree, Mark Heard, Noel Paul Stookey, Karen Lafferty, Debby Kerner & Ernie Rettino), soft rock (Chuck Girard, Tom Howard, Phil Keaggy, Scott Wesley Brown, Kelly Willard), R&B (Andraé Crouch (and the Disciples)), soul music/jazz fusion (Sweet Comfort Band), country rock (Bethlehem, Daniel Amos, Gentle Faith, The Talbot Brothers: John Michael and Terry Talbot, The Way), Ron Salsbury and JC Power Outlet and hard rock (Agape, All Saved Freak Band, Petra, Resurrection Band, Servant). Initially, the music tended to be relatively simple, as it drew largely on guitar-based folk and folk-rock influences. The message also seemed to be relatively simple, as the songwriters attempted to present the value of a Christ-centered spiritual experience without evoking the vocabulary or other trappings of ecclesiastical religion. Rather than quoting religious cliches or King James Bible verses, they used storytelling, allegory, imagery, and complex metaphors, often with a colloquial language that flustered conservatives. In addition to the basic message of salvation, the lyrics often reflected the expectation of the imminent Second Coming of Christ prominent in evangelical circles at the time, reflected and heightened by the publication of The Late, Great Planet Earth. Despite the message, the music was described by many as worldly at best or as “the Devil’s music” in the worst case. This latter position was held by conservatives such as Bill Gothard as taught in his Basic Youth Conflicts Seminars. These were some of the main factors that caused many U.S. churches to largely reject the movement and these artists at the time. This suited many artists as they wanted to bring Jesus to non-Christians, not only to church youth. Larry Norman addressed this culture clash in his 1972 song, “Why Should The Devil Have All the Good Music?” On the West Coast of the United States, Jesus music festivals began to emerge in the summer months of the early 1970s, featuring many of the artists listed above. While the music was often loud and the venue similar to the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock, the atmosphere was decidedly different and attracted large crowds of camping families as well as teenagers and young adults. By 1973, Jesus music was receiving enough attention inside the mainstream media that an industry began to emerge. By the mid-1970s, the phrase “contemporary Christian music” (CCM) had been coined by Ron Moore and the first edition of CCM Magazine was published in July 1977. CCM now was a combination of traditional gospel music, Southern gospel music, Jesus music artists, and in some cases a style of big-band music with Christian lyrics. By 1976, it was apparent that a new generation of performers who had grown up in the church wanted to play non-secular pop and rock music for other Christians. By the end of the 1970s the term “Jesus music” fell out of use as the movement was replaced by the industry.

Jewish hip-hop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Jewish hip hop artists have come from a wide variety of countries and cultures. Elements of reggae, klezmer, and other world music are often incorporated alongside traditional hip hop production techniques like cutting, scratching, sampling, looping, and beatboxing. Many Jewish rappers are also multilingual, rapping in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, Ladino, and other languages, depending on their background.

1980s through 1990s#

From its commercial golden age in the 1980s and early 1990s, Jewish artists, producers, and executives played a significant role in the hip hop industry. In Israel, Jewish rappers like Shabak Samech’s Mook E, Hadag Nahash, Sagol 59, Subliminal, The Shadow, and SHI 360 helped pioneer the country’s hip hop scene in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Despite this, few of these acts acknowledged their Jewish heritage in their music, with some exceptions being Hip Hop Hoodíos, the parody group 2 Live Jews, and Ruthless Records signees Blood of Abraham. During this time, Jewish religious music occasionally incorporated hip hop, although largely for parody and children’s music, such as Craig Taubman’s “Chanukah Rap” and Shlock Rock’s songs with rapper Etan G.

Jewish music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Religious Jewish music in the biblical period#

The history of religious Jewish music spans the evolution of cantorial, synagogal, and Temple melodies since Biblical times. The earliest synagogal music of which we have any account was based on the system used in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Mishnah gives several accounts of Temple music. According to the Mishnah, the regular Temple orchestra consisted of twelve instruments, and a choir of twelve male singers. The instruments included the kinnor (lyre), nevel (harp), tof (tambourine), shofar (ram’s horn), ḥatzotzᵊrot (trumpet) and three varieties of pipe, the chalil, alamoth and the uggav. The Temple orchestra also included a cymbal (tziltzal) made of copper. The Talmud also mentions use in the Temple of a pipe organ (magrepha), and states that the water organ was not used in the Temple as its sounds were too distracting. No provable examples of the music played at the Temple have survived. However, there is an oral tradition that the tune used for Kol Nidrei was sung in the temple. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and the subsequent dispersion of the Jews to Babylon and Persia, versions of the public singing of the Temple were continued in the new institution of the synagogue. Three musical forms were identified by scholars of the period, involving different modes of antiphonal response between cantor and congregation: the cantor singing a half-verse at a time, with the congregation making a constant refrain; the cantor singing a half-verse, with the congregation repeating exactly what he had sung; and the cantor and congregation singing alternate verses. All of these forms can be discerned in parts of the modern synagogue service.

Jewish rock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins in America and Israel: 1960s to 1980s#

As early as the 1960s, established Jewish composers like Gershon Kingsley and Cantor Ray Smolover began using contemporary rock and jazz styles in their work. Simultaneously, Shlomo Carlebach, a German-born Hasidic rabbi and songwriter, began his career mixing traditional Jewish songs with the folk music and hippie subculture of the day for kiruv purposes, which would directly influence many Jewish artists over the course of his career. One of the first full-fledged rock acts in Orthodox music was the Diaspora Yeshiva Band, founded in 1975 by American-born students at the Diaspora Yeshiva in Jerusalem, which had been founded by a colleague of Carlebach’s. The founding lineup featured Avraham Rosenblum on guitar, Ben Zion Solomon on fiddle and banjo, Simcha Abramson on saxophone and clarinet, Ruby Harris on violin, mandolin, guitar, and harmonica, Adam Wexler on bass, and Gedalia Goldstein on drums. They played rock and bluegrass music with Jewish-themed lyrics, with the group self-describing its style as “Hasidic rock” and “Country and Eastern”. The Israeli group Tofa’ah emerged in 1981 as the first all-female Orthodox Jewish rock band, playing a mix of blues, jazz, and rock and roll. Around the same time, singer-songwriter Yosi Piamenta, a baal teshuva who had previously played with jazz legend Stan Getz, broke into Jewish music, where he pioneered the use of electric guitar. In the United States, Shlock Rock, formed in New York City in 1985, performed Jewish parody versions of many popular American songs, including rock music.

Jewish western art music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Jewish music composition according to the western artistic theory of the period was initially documented in western musical notes. Evidence of 12th century’s musical notes was found in the Cairo Genizah and was written by the Normandyian Obadiah the Proselyte. These musical notes are the earliest (most ancient) musical written document owned by a synagogue.
During the 16th and 17th centuries the renaissance culture was greatly widespread, and consequently, it influenced the Jewish community. One of the effects of it was on the performance of art music in synagogues. The Jewish people, who didn’t feel comfortable to be part of a less developed culture, have started building big synagogues, beautifully structured, and gorgeously magnificently decorated with fine art, not less than the next door churches in Casale Monferrato, Florence, Venice and in Rome. the outstanding composer of that period was the Italian composer Salamone Rossi. He was well known thanks to his great contribution to the art music played in synagogues. First signs of art music in the synagogues were revealed in Padua (Between the years of 1555 till 1565), in Ferrara (1605), Mantuna (from 1610 till 1612) and in Venice (in about 1628). During this period, due to the Counter-Reformation, the Jews were pushed to ghettos in Italy. Apparently, the Jewish communities being transformed to ghettos and the rise of art music synagogue not only overlap in time, but also have a causality relation.
In the middle of the 17th century, the beginning of the middle Baroque period, performing art music was common in many synagogues in Italy. We know that thanks to the writings of Yehudah Mi-modena who quoted the words of Nethanel Trabot from 1645 about the music which is played and sung in synagogues while Jews worship god. Researchers found evidence of art music being a common component and institutionalized in the cultural life of the Jewish ghettos in Italy
The descendants of Anusim (crypto-Jews) from Spain and Portugal who had settled in Amsterdam in the late 16th century have become one of the most prosperous communities in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. These crypto-Jews who returned to the Judaism, assimilated Christian culture in the years that they were living as a Christian. The admixture of Jewish people who hide their true identity, living as Christian, belonging to high society, and having the need to create art resulted in many art works in various fields.
The only Jewish community left in France after the 1394 Expulsion from France were the Provence Jewish community. Since they weren’t expelled, they had an opportunity to develop a rich community culture. One of the remaining of this community is of great worth – The Kantata for a Brith

Musical background#

Combining music in religious ceremonies is a common costume in the human culture. The influence music has on its listeners is mentioned in the Byble on different occasions. Three examples of that are: * In the book of Psalms- the Tribe of Levi singing at the Temple in Jerusalem. (Psalms, chapter 92, 4th verse) * In the story of king Saul who invited David to play music for him. * in the story of the battle between the three kings: the King of Judah, the king of Israel, Jehoram and the king of Edom who fought against Moab, the son of Lot. The water was running out, and so before they went to the fight, Jehoram pleaded Elisha the Prophet to prophesy and create water. Elish in return, demanded to use the power of music with which he managed to provide water. The Masoretes who strived to create uniformity to the Jewish prayer invented the nikkud (Hebrew vocalization) and Cantillation, which later became a significant layer for the Jewish prayer standardization. However, the Cantillation versions differ, therefore it is not possible to know the tune that it was sung in the period it was written. Similar phenomena have occurred in the Christian Church. During Charlemagne’s period in the 9th century, Due to the requirement of the Church to unify all versions of the Christian prayer early musical notes have been invented, which revolutionized the world of western music: it created a unified language understandable to anyone who acquired the knowledge of music notation. Music notation is the system used to visually represent aurally perceived music through the use of written symbols. Since its creation, the western music has developed and become a significant language for western music documentation. The voices and harmony arrangement elements as well as the various components it has, are an important element in the justification given for performing a western-style music in the synagogue.