Can you remember the feeling of purchasing a brand new record? Bringing it home, removing it from its colorful cardboard sleeve, gently moving the turntable arm into the first groove. You’d spend the afternoon lying on your belly studying the album cover art, the lyrics and the black-and-white back photos as you played the record over and over.
San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum comes close to recreating those music-listening memories with its new exhibit “Jews on Vinyl,” on display through June 9. The exhibit features a retro living room set — square couch, orange shag rug, vintage lamps and side tables — along with replicas of Jewish-themed album covers.
“We created a 1950s living room environment because so much music was produced then,” says CJM Director Connie Wolf. “These were albums played in people’s homes — people will walk into that space and it will provide a context for listening.”
The exhibit’s albums come courtesy of the authors of “And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost.” In the recently published book, Josh Kun and Roger Bennett make the argument for the importance of Jewish album covers from the 1920s to ’70s as a historical narrative, not just for the music inside. The co-authors are acting as co-curators of the exhibit.
The museum connection stems from a meeting between Wolf and Bennett a few years back. Wolf found the topic fascinating.
“I was really taken by it,” she explains. I found the ideas and issues raised by the book about music and Jewish American culture to be incredibly engaging for a wider audience.”
“Jews on Vinyl” kicked off Feb. 5 with an opening gathering and discussion led by Kun and Bennett. In the coming months various lectures and events will be scheduled in conjunction with the exhibit. There also will be at least one performance by some of the musicians whose lost-but-not-forgotten records line the CJM’s walls; the first, co-presented by Reboot, will take place 7 p.m. April 30 at the CJM (with an artist to be announced).
Album covers gracing the exhibit space include the Barry Sisters’ “Shalom,” Irving Fields Trio’s “Bagels and Bongos,” and the Sabras’ “Jerusalem Gold.” The albums represent an assortment of musical styles, from well-known pop music (Neil Diamond’s “Hot August Night”) to little-known Jewish comedy (Marty Gale’s “Sexy Stories with a Yiddisha Flavor”).
Along with the album cover replicas will be two listening stations, one of which includes audio of 18 versions of “Hava Negillah,” along with music from the albums playing in the gallery space.
While the exhibit seems to cater to the boomer generation, for younger Jews it will be an opportunity to experience the medium of a bygone age.
Kun, who teaches music history courses at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, says there’s quite a bit of difference between going to a local shop to buy a record and simply downloading from iTunes.
“My students grew up in a digital age where vinyl was a bizarre object they had to work to get,” he says. “I’m not judging, but this creates a different set of listening practices, a different relationship to music identity. People don’t end up listening to full albums the way they used to.”
But Kun has hope for future generations.
“A lot of [bands] are putting their music on vinyl again,” he explains. “There could be new histories to tell — and I’m hoping younger fans of this music can start adding to the project.”
“The project” is Kun and Bennett’s ever-growing physical music archive along with their Wikipedia-style Web site categorizing Jewish music, www.idelsounds.com.
Wolf says she thinks a wide variety of Bay Area people will be excited about the exhibit.
“It will connect people with their music or their grandmother’s music,” she explains, “and I think [in San Francisco] people are interested in the evolution of music.”
“Jews on Vinyl” is on display through June 9 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St., S.F. For more information, visit www.thecjm.org.