January 24 • 2019 47
jn

Press, Slobin writes about the Jewish 
love affair (including his own) with 
the violin: “For the Jews, the violin lit-
erally had a special resonance. It was 
the lead instrument in the traditional 
klezmer dance bands for weddings 
… It was not just an instrument, 
but a voice, a tool for meditation 
in the slow pieces played around 
the tables at a celebration. Then the 
fiddles kicked in and got people up 
and dancing. As the older folkways 
faded, the enormous success of Jewish 
virtuoso concert artists like the ones 
I heard at the Masonic Temple only 
raised the violin to a new height of 
enjoyment and pride.”

MUSIC IN THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
“Jews were completely fragmented” 
during the 1940s-1960s, he said. 
There were Orthodox Jews, Soviet 
Jews. There were labor unions, 
Zionists. “They fought over every-
thing,” he said. “But it was interest-
ing to look at how the subgroups 
expressed themselves musically in 
synagogues and Yiddish theaters. 
Classical music became the civil and 
cultural identity of Detroit Jews. 
There was an outreach musically to 
the rest of Detroit, which, at the time, 

was among the most anti-Semitic cit-
ies in the country.”
Slobin did a lot of his research for 
the book using the Detroit Jewish 
News Foundation William Davidson 
Archive of Detroit Jewish History, 
where he searched through the pages 
of the Jewish News to see what the 
community was doing. 
“
A lot of what the Jewish communi-
ty did was outreach through ecumen-
ical concerts — projecting themselves 
into the life of Detroit,” he said.
Yet classical music remained at the 
heart of Jewish Detroit. 
“During the early 1950s, the 
orchestra was threatening to unionize 
and businessmen had pulled out their 
support. Jews stepped in to keep the 
orchestra going and saw the sympho-

ny through several difficult times. 
Musicians banded together to keep 
it going, including my own violin 
teachers.”
In the 1940s, he writes, Julius 
Chajes was brought in to run the JCC 
orchestras and did some astounding 
things. “It was the most elaborate 
cultural programming of any Jewish 
Community Center in the country,” 
said Slobin, who shares the stories in 
his book. 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS’
 ROLE
The Detroit JCC had a school of 
music, and the Junior Music Study 
Club at the JCC did a lot to promote 
musically talented youth, said Slobin, 
who also studied at Cass Tech, where 
he played in the orchestra, “which 
produced a lot of musicians, including 
Darwyn Apple, a pioneering African 
American orchestra player who had 
a long career in St. Louis. Also, the 
Barnes brothers, Robert and Darrel, 
who worked in the Boston and 
Philadelphia orchestras later.
” After 
high school, he headed to University 
of Michigan, where, except for a two-
year break studying at a New York 
conservatory, he earned bachelor’
s, 
master’
s and doctorate degrees. 

According to Slobin, “Many 
Jewish classical musicians came out 
of Detroit. The educational system 
believed in music as not just a leveler, 
but a career path in those days … The 
public-school system in Detroit had 
a long-term effect on the dozens of 
children who went on to active lives 
in music from Detroit.
“Some musicians got on a career 
highway that might well take them 
away from Detroit, whereas others 
went back to their neighborhoods, 
becoming, for example, major polka 
band leaders who could use their 
skills in ensemble and arranging 
within their communities. It’
s one of 
the fascinating and little-known sto-
ries about the musical life of Detroit 
at its peak of civic striving.” ■

“Th
 e music fl
 owed from Jew to gentile, 
from black to white … it was the cultural 
agent of the city.”

MARK SLOBIN, AUTHOR, MOTOR CITY MUSIC 

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