Sounding Jewish in Berlin

Reviews / Votes

A fresh perspective on a well-worn debate that is both nuanced as much as it is politicised ... The book is rich in musical examples and ethnographic descriptions that demonstrate how Berlin klezmer is a novel phenomenon nurtured much more by the contemporary city than by a national past. * Isabel Frey, Ethnomusicology Forum * This is the first full-length study of a single klezmer and Yiddish music community: Berlin in the early to mid-2010s. Alexander beautifully shows how place is both involved in and impacted by the development of this local and at the same time transnational music scene. Drawing on urban studies and cultural studies alongside ethnomusicology, Alexander expands outwards from this snapshot of a particular moment in time, interrogating the nature of music revivals and exposing all of the resonances and contradictions involved, from ethnic, religious and national identities to affinities, continuities and ruptures, aesthetics, ideologies, politics, and memorial culture. It makes an important contribution to urban ethnomusicology, Jewish and ethnic studies, and to intercultural dialogue. * Joel E. Rubin, Associate Professor of Music, University of Virginia, ethnomusicologist, clarinetist, bandleader, recording artist * With this rich, incisive account of klezmer's reinvention in contemporary Berlin, Phil Alexander makes a compelling contribution to the scholarship of contemporary urban musics, reaching beyond well-worn narratives of heritage, multiculturalism and appropriation to demonstrate how musical practices are produced by - and share in producing - the city around them. * Abigail Wood, Senior Lecturer, Department of Music, School of Arts, University of Haifa *