46 January 24 • 2019 jn JACKIE HEADAPOHL MANAGING EDITOR D etroit is known as Motown, but there’ s more to the city’ s musical histo- ry than the funky sounds coming out of Hitsville U.S.A. from the Supremes and Jackson Five. From the 1940s-1960s, there was a huge variety of ethnic music-making across Detroit’ s 139 square miles, writes ethnomusicol- ogist Mark Slobin in his new book, Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back (Oxford University Press, 2018), the first-ever histori- cal study across all musical genres of any American city. The book is “part memoir, part social history, written for a general audience,” said Slobin, whose pre- vious books about East European Jewish music and klezmer music, as well as the music of Afghanistan, were written for a more academic reader. Slobin is professor emeritus of music and American studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. “Detroit in the 1940s-’ 60s was not just ‘ the capital of the 20th century’ for industry and the war effort, but also for the quantity and extremely high quality of its musicians, from jazz to classical to ethnic,” writes Slobin, who grew up in Post-WWII Detroit in the heart of the Jewish community. Slobin begins the book with a reflection of his early life. Looking first at the crucial role of the public schools in fostering talent, Motor City Music sur- veys the neighborhoods of older European immigrants and of the later huge waves of black and white Southerners who migrated to Detroit to serve the auto and defense industries. “Detroit was a city divided by race and class, union and corpo- rate, and the main theme of the book is how music worked to unify the disparate situations of a troubled city,” he says. “The music flowed from Jew to gentile, from black to white … it was the cultur- al agent of the city.” GROWING UP IN JEWISH DETROIT Slobin’ s father was a native Detroiter and his mother was an immigrant from southern Ukraine. Slobin grew up around a lot of Yiddish and a sense of the “old country. ” After a year studying German when he was 10, the “Yiddish fell into place for me, ” he said, “and I could write letters to my grandma in Yiddish. ” His family valued music high- ly. “They sang a lot. Around the piano. In the car. And it was a ritual to buy season tickets to the symphony. Music was important in our lives,” he said. Although Slobin had a bar mitzvah, his family wasn’ t very observant and did not belong to a synagogue. “We had big family seders, but classical music was like our reli- gion. Classical music was essential to the Detroit Jewish experience during that time. ” Slobin began violin lessons when he was 4, taught by family friend Ben Silverstein, whose son would go on to become the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony. Slobin was in the all- city orchestra by the time he was 6 or 7. After Silverstein’ s untimely death five years later, Slobin continued his studies with other teachers, “three of whom, all in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, later moonlighted for Motown,” he says. In a blog for Oxford University books arts&life New book looks back at Detroit’ s musical legacy from the 1940s-1960s. More Than Just Motown High Praise The book, published in November 2018, already has some major fans. Leonard Slatkin, music director laureate, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, says, “Motor City Music is a loving portrait of one person’ s experience with the history of musicmaking in the D. Mark Slobin does not limit himself to one or two styles or genres, thus giving the reader valuable insight into the variety of sounds coming into and out of Detroit.”