musical superpower

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Jun 15, 2011 at 16:57

I'm not surprised at Israel appearing among major producers of Western classical music. Think of all those Jewish Russian fiddlers who've moved there; and, before, there must have been a few renowned Jewish musician survivors of the Shoah who ended up there, too.

But, back in the early days of the Iraq war, I was reading some blogs by both Iraqis and Americans, and one comment by an Iraqi with a Muslim-appearing name sounded very regretful about how, in the 1940's and '50's, the Ba'athists had gotten rid of all the great performers of traditional Iraqi music (who were Jewish). Does anyone around here know more about whether or not the Mizrahis were famous as musicians back before they got run out of the Arab world?

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