ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines a particular Jewish performer, or a particular musical genre, and considers how that person, or genre, has been constructed through the prism of Jewishness. It is concerned with aspects of the relationship between Jews and popular music after the Second World War. The book explains the relationship between Jews and torch songs. It talks about the relationship between Jews and the blues in the United States in the 1960s. The book discusses the way that the Beastie Boys mediated rap music for a white audience. It explores the racial complexities that inform the Australian careers of Renee Geyer and Marcia Hines. The book sets an investigation of Shapiro in a larger discussion of the ways in which those singers of the 1960s who were associated with black music, including Dusty Springfield and Lulu, were constructed as not-quite-white/not-quite-English.
