Jukebox. Jewkbox!
A Jewish Century on Shellac and Vinyl
Jukebox. Jewkbox!
A Jewish Century on Shellac and Vinyl
An exhibition in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Munich
“Jukebox. Jewkbox!” focuses on one specific facet of popular Jewish culture: In the late 19th century, a German-Jewish emigrant to the USA changed the world. Through the invention of the gramophone and the record by Emil Berliner (1851–1929), the age of mass entertainment found its first global medium. Over a period of one hundred years, shellac and vinyl were the sound carriers of popular culture. On them, all the experiences of the 20th century, its utopias and catastrophes, illusions and hopes were condensed. The record,…
Jukebox. Jewkbox!
A Jewish Century on Shellac and Vinyl
An exhibition in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Munich
“Jukebox. Jewkbox!” focuses on one specific facet of popular Jewish culture: In the late 19th century, a German-Jewish emigrant to the USA changed the world. Through the invention of the gramophone and the record by Emil Berliner (1851–1929), the age of mass entertainment found its first global medium. Over a period of one hundred years, shellac and vinyl were the sound carriers of popular culture. On them, all the experiences of the 20th century, its utopias and catastrophes, illusions and hopes were condensed. The record, mass produced and guided by collective taste, was at the same time an expression of individual identity and an object of ritual. The “Jewish experience” in the 20th century, too, found its expression on records – from the introduction of synagogue music into the middle-class Jewish home to the reinvention of Jewish folk music; from the career of Yiddish theater songs on Broadway to the punk rebellion. The history of the record is also a history of Jewish inventors, musicians, composers, music producers, and songwriters. Their music the omnipresent sound of the 20th century and its best-known songs, musicals, and soundtracks – was not always “Jewish“ music, but still a product of Jewish history and experience.
“Jukebox. Jewkbox!” presents this history from the first gramophones and shellac records to the dissolution of this medium in the World Wide Web – a journey of discovery through the unfamiliar spheres in the world of popular culture, accompanied by personal stories about records that have changed many a life.
Duration of exhibition
March 25 - November 22, 2015
Curator
Hanno Loewy
Architecture
atelier stecher, Götzis
PUBLIKATION
Der Katalog zur Ausstellung
Um 1900 veränderte der jüdische Emigrant Emil Berliner die Welt. Mit der Erfindung der Schallplatte war das erste Medium einer globalen Kultur geboren. Und das jüdische Jahrhundert hat auf Schellack und Vinyl seinen Ausdruck gefunden – von der Verwandlung synagogaler Musik in bürgerlichen Kunstgenuss bis zur Neuerfindung jüdischer Folkmusik, von der Karriere jiddischer Theaterlieder auf dem Broadway bis zur Rebellion des Punk.
Die Geschichte der Schallplatte ist auch eine Geschichte jüdischer Erfinder, Musiker und Komponisten, Produzenten und Songwriter. Ihre Musik, der Sound des 20. Jahrhunderts, war nicht immer „jüdische“ Musik – aber ein Produkt jüdischer Erfahrung. Eine Entdeckungsreise durch unbekannte Welten der populären Kultur, begleitet von persönlichen Erzählungen über Schallplatten, die manches Leben verändert haben.
Mit Essays von Caspar Battegay, Alan Dein, Helene Maimann, Raymond Wolff. Beiträge von Timna Brauer, Vladimir Vertlib, Lizzie Doron, Ari Rath, Cilly Kugelmann, Marian Fuks, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Michael Asch und vielen anderen.