Jonathan at The House of Hock discovers Jewish Music blogs.
I disagree with his assertion that the point of music in the Orthodox community is "mainly to maintain their Jewish identity." Perhaps that's what it should be, but that is definitely not an accurate description of the bulk of the music being produced by the Brooklyn JM scene.
I also think that he's mischaracterized our respective positions on what we think JM ought to be. Each of the JM bloggers has different musical preferences -- where we agree is that the current spate of commercial Jewish albums lacks soul. Simply put, the music isn't good because there's no "there" here. Quality isn't necessarily synonymous with "rocking" or "spiritual" music, and from my perspective, one can have quality music in any style. The current commercial stuff, though, simply isn't up to par. It fails both as Jewish music and as pop music... and that's the real issue that I have with it.
