Musical Contacts Between the Polish and Jewish Communities and the Image of Jewish Culture in Nineteenth-Century Polish Popular Music

Abstract

Enduring contacts between Polish and Jewish communities on Polish soil began to take shape around the turn of the thirteenth century, initiating a period of many centuries of mutual cultural and musical influence. Extant sources, although few and far between (normative documents, chronicles, journalistic accounts, commentaries from observers and scholars, iconography, sheet music, recorded music and films), enable us to follow the development of the mutual musical relations between the two national groups over time. Yet this article concentrates primarily on the state of those relations during the nineteenth century, limited to popular culture. Taking the works of Oskar Kolberg as an example, we will discuss the repertoire of the Jewish community at that time, as perceived and received by the Polish community. This will be followed by a presentation of Jewish music groups that played for Poles as well, and also of particularly popular Jewish musicians who were singled out by journalists at that time. The article also presents the way in which Jews and their musical culture were depicted by Polish journalists and portrayed in the musical expression of representatives of rural and urban communities.The article shows that the image of Jews and their musical culture among different strata of Polish society during the nineteenth century varied a great deal. The virtuosity of Jewish musicians aroused interest and admiration among the Polish intelligentsia and acquired a mythologised personification in the literary figure of Jankiel. Lower social strata, when taking up Jewish strands in their musical expression, were often reacting to conflicts of interest experienced in their contacts with Jews representing a pre-capitalist economy. Jews in ritual and everyday situations constituted important ritual symbols bringing in wealth, and their very presence in theatrical forms was perceived partly as evidence of the veracity of biblical events. References to Jewish culture in the musical expression of the Polish community were confined to the most common stereotypes, which attests to the superficiality of the contacts between the two communities. Against that background, the actual idiom of Jewish music was far better understood, imitated and copied.