Seth Rogovoy, a contributing editor at the Forward, is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet (Scribner) and Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press).
Seth Rogovoy
By Seth Rogovoy
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Culture What I Learned From a ‘Stiff-Necked Jewish Atheist’ Like Nat Hentoff
Reading Nat Hentoff in the 1970s in the Village Voice and elsewhere, as I did, helped clue me into an essential truth: that a writer needn’t specialize in one area to the exclusion of all else. In Hentoff’s case – which was particularly inspiring to me as a budding music critic who was also obsessed…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Dylan at Tanglewood
Going into Bob Dylan’s concert at Tanglewood on July 2, 2016, I was prepared to hate it, having absolutely no interest in hearing him sing Frank Sinatra songs live (or on record, for that matter). Leave it to Dylan, then, to perform a scorching two-hour show. He alternated some of his moodiest, angriest, late-period rockers…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of ‘Fences’ Author August Wilson
The long-awaited film version of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson’s “Fences” opens nationally on Sunday, December 25. The movie is being touted as Oscar bait for Denzel Washington, who both stars in and directs the film, and for his co-star Viola Davis. (The film reprises their roles in the 2010 Broadway revival of this Pulitzer-…
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Culture Did Kanye and Trump Trade Jewish Gossip — or Just Say ‘L’Chaim’?
Rapper Kanye West paid a visit to Trump Tower on Tuesday to visit with the man he told an audience recently he would have voted for had he voted on Election Day. Two days after that concert, on November 21, the hip-hop superstar cancelled his remaining concerts and was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital,…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of Jackie Kennedy
Now that Jackie Kennedy is being portrayed onscreen by the most famous Israeli-born actress in the world, it’s worth looking closely at the former first lady’s life to pick up the Jewish strands she left behind. 1) Although Jacqueline Bouvier boasted Anglo-Irish and French ancestry, that didn’t stop some from falsely claiming Jewish heritage for…
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Culture Why We Shouldn’t Criticize Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize Snubs
Bob Dylan’s entire 54-year career can be read as one controversy following another. He started out as a traditional folkie who then betrayed tradition by writing his own songs. Then he betrayed the movement when he forsook topical and political protest songs for more personal, poetic musings. Then of course he shocked everyone by abandoning…
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Music One of the Greatest Rock and Roll Songs of All Time was Inspired by a Jewish Bookseller
One of the Band’s most enigmatic yet best-known songs is “The Weight.” It’s in the Top 50 of Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”; in the Top 15 of Pitchfork’s “Best Songs of the Sixties”; and one of the “500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll,” according to the Rock and Roll Hall…
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Culture How The Klezmatics Changed Music — and My Life
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say the Klezmatics changed my life. Somehow I made my way to the Knitting Factory nightclub in downtown Manhattan in April 1997 to see the album release concert for the Klezmatics’ album “Possessed.” I was there in part as a music critic of 15 years’ standing, and partly out…
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