Friday, November 11, 2011

Over the Rainbow

My university is hosting a small exhibit this month emphasizing the contributions of Jewish-American songwriters to American popular culture:

















There's a lecture series, music (of course!), performance of select scenes from famous Jewish-American playwrights, and more! We do what we can with limited means to bring cultural diversity to our small campus. The exhibit is based on this book: A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs.

10 comments:

The Bug said...

What fun!

Reya Mellicker said...

Cool!

Summertime was written by a Jew? Wow.

Reya Mellicker said...

Gershwin! Of course. Wow.

Carolina Linthead said...

Reya: the lyrics were written by DuBose Heyward, non-Jewish, but still, yeah, Gershwin!

Carolina Linthead said...

"Stormy Weather" and "Get Happy" were written by the Jewish team of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler, and "Over the Rainbow" was written by Arlen and another Jewish lyricist, Yip Harburg. :-)

Catalyst said...

Where would we be without . . .

NCmountainwoman said...

You have broadened my knowledge considerably. I knew some of them, but had no idea of the others. That is such a great idea.

Carolina Linthead said...

It is a traveling exhibit of interpretive panels sponsored by the American Library Association. We submitted a proposal, written by our marvelous library director, and were accepted! My colleague Ryan gave a lecture on famous Jewish jurists and Jewish Americans in politics, we've had lectures on music, plays, singing, etc. We're a very small school, but we have fun :-)

Margaret said...

Thank you for this whole post! I adore "Get Happy" and
SOTR has been a personal favorite for a long time... Bardot's rendition of it is very interesting - not a good idea to try and copy Judy! :) And Summertime... Well, this post is full of my favorites!

Margaret said...

...and "That's Entertainment"... was swonderfu! I have to copy it to my blog in the next few days... I'll give this post a link. I could watch that entertainment forever!