The Database of Recorded Jewish Music (DRJM) began in 2019 with the aim of exploring how research methods and tools utilized the digital humanities might complement the study of Jewish music—broadly conceived—in the fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, Jewish studies, American music, cultural studies, comparative literature, performance studies, library science, and sound studies. We hypothesized that applying such techniques as data visualization, network analysis, and textual analysis on a large scale could open new avenues for research and analysis. We further envisioned that a sound, data-oriented approach to recorded Jewish music could achieve an analytical scope heretofore unseen in a field typified by highly focused studies on individuals or small groups in highly circumscribed historical and ethnographic contexts. We see significant potential in a data-centered approach that would enable researchers to look at trends and patterns over long periods of time, that could glimpse entire genres of music and historical periods, and that could reveal connections in unexpected places. From 2019 to the present, the DRJM project has grown in both depth and breadth, and become significantly more refined.
PHASE I (Summer 2019–Spring 2021): Visualizing the Archive, a Pilot Study
The initial phase of this project involved a pilot study on one relatively small collection of recordings: the Milken Archive of Jewish Music: the American Experience. Comprised of roughly 800 individual musical works, with repertoire spanning the full history of Jews in the U.S. (including the Colonial Era), the pilot study aimed to create and test a preliminary analytical rubric that could be broadly applied to musical works pertaining to the Jewish experience. We developed a rubric comprising forty-one different criteria across eight distinct categories, and sought to profile musical works based on parameters of genre, style, and language, as well as its various groundings in the Jewish experience. The results of this research were presented to numerous scholars in informal contexts for feedback and critique, as well as in several formal contexts, most recently the World Congress of Jewish Studies conference in 2022. Additionally, we created a “data dashboard” visualization and discovery tool that has been published on the Milken Archive’s website, which allows users to explore the Milken Archive recording collection according to most of the criteria in the analytical rubric.
PHASE II (Summer 2021–Spring 2022): Compiling Data and Expanding Resources
Encouraged by the success of our pilot study, we set out in search of raw data from existing archival collections with the aim of aggregating it into a single, authoritative database of Jewish musical recordings held in American institutions. We sought data from the following major collections:
- Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University
- Robert and Molly Freedman Jewish Sound Archive at the University of Pennsylvania
- The Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive
- The Mayrent Collection of Yiddish Recordings at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
Additional data was gathered from the publication, Ethnic Music on Records: A Discography of Ethnic Recordings Produced in the United States, 1893-1942, Vol. 3: Eastern Europe, Section 16 “Jewish Music,” pp. 1293-1552, by Richard Spotswood.
For this phase of our research project, we worked closely with several members of UCLA’s Digital Humanities program to determine the best resources and direction for our research goals.
- Anthony Caldwell, Assistant Director, UCLA Digital Research Consortium; Manager & Resident Technologist, Scholarly Innovation Labs
- Wendy Perla Kurtz, Project Scientist, UCLA Digital Research Consortium
- Todd Presner, Associate Dean of Digital Innovation in the Division of the Humanities
- Ashley Sanders Garcia, Vice Chair of Digital Humanities
In consultation with these resources, we worked with UCLA Research and Instructional Technology Consultant Fellows as well as undergraduate Computer Science students on the design and development of a MySQL database to aggregate and store the data collected from these different sources. At the same time, we contracted with several UCLA undergraduate students completing the Digital Humanities minor on capstone projects that used data we had created or collected. This provided students an opportunity to work on a unique digital humanities project, and for the research team to explore new research avenues and confront limitations.
PHASE III (Summer 2022–Present): Data Cleaning and Refinement, Advanced Visualization
For the past year, the research team has pursued the twin paths of cleaning and refining our existing data, and optimizing the use of Tableau to create advanced visualizations of the current data set. Multiple undergraduate and graduate student workers have used Google’s OpenRefine platform, in conjunctions with name authority resources such as VIAF (Virtual International Authority File), the Library of Congress, and Discogs.com to cluster, clean, and deduplicate data related to artist names, album titles, and release years. Additionally, we have been troubleshooting and working to correct a subset of data that was delivered in two phases and needs to be reimported as a single data set. Finally, as we look to take this project toward higher levels of analytical sophistication, we have begun discussions with professional database design and development contractors. Based on what we have learned over the past few years, we have a clear idea of what is needed to design and build a robust and sophisticated database that can accommodate our current data and also incorporate the WEMI (work, expression, manifestation, item) conceptual model that effectively distinguishes between a piece of music (work), its realization in performance (expression), its physical embodiment in a recorded medium (manifestation), and copies of manifestations (items) that can be collected and owned by individuals and institutions. Incorporating the WEMI model into our database is the next crucial step for creating a comprehensive catalog of Jewish music that has been created, recorded, and consumed in the United States over the past 150 years.