Shir Hadash — Hebrew for "a new song" — is from the passage in Psalms that entreats a creative musical response from the Jewish people. And respond they have! Music has played a vital role in Jewish life for thousands of years, and music by, for, and about Jews will be the focus of this new New Jersey Jewish News column.

Yuval, a descendant of the fratricidal Cain, is the first musician mentioned in the Torah, credited with inventing string and wind instruments. Many of the commentators were not so impressed — the medieval sage Rashi explains that this music was used for idolatry. Thus was born the image of the musician as a disreputable iconoclast.

Luckily, Miriam's tof and King David's virtuoso kinor were better received by the biblical commentators. The Levites were the house band at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, playing nightly to sold-out crowds. In fact, it is said that the prophets could not prophesy without their favorite tunes being played. The pagan orchestra of the Babylonian conqueror Nebuchadnezzar, however, as recounted in the Book of Daniel, cemented the questionable reputation of the musician, and to this day no self-respecting Jewish mother would want her daughter to marry one!

But from the start, instrumental and vocal music in Jewish daily life was here to stay. From the synagogue to the wedding hall, from the shtetl to the world's great concert venues, Jews and music have been inseparable. The cantorial traditions of the Ashkenazi and Sephardi hazanim are a uniquely Jewish contribution to vocal music, and from the Jew's harp (not so Jewish) to the fiddle (pretty Jewish) to the clarinet (quite Jewish) to the accordion (very Jewish), our people have excelled in virtuoso musical performance.

Most writing about Jews and music over the years has inevitably degenerated into a boastful litany of contributions by Jews to the general cultural scene.

To be sure, along with our African-American brethren, Jewish artists have led the way in the development of music in America and throughout the world. From Paula Abdul to John Zorn, Pinchas Zukerman to Emanuel Ax, Bacharach to Bikel, Benny Goodman, and Beck, Jewish musicians have been wildly successful innovators, refiners, and curators of much of the great music of the 20th century.

Although folks have been writing music about Jews for a while — in works as widely divergent as Irving Berlin's "Cohen Owes Me $97" and Captain Beefheart's "Dachau Blues" — the most interesting topic for me is music that reflects a purposeful, distinctly Jewish attitude and experience and seeks to entertain, challenge, and enlighten its listeners. Secular, religious, agnostic — this column will cast a wide net, and we will find ourselves immersed in the best of rock, jazz, classical, hip-hop, worldbeat, cantorial, techno, Middle Eastern, alternative, and, yes, klezmer.

There are many excellent books for learning about our historical roots — Marsha Bryan Edelman's Discovering Jewish Music (JPS, 2003), for example — so our focus will be the exciting Jewish music being made today, here in the United States and around the world.

As George Robinson, music critic for the (New York) Jewish Week writes, "Jewish music has been in the midst of an amazingly broad renaissance. It reminds me of the old line: If you don't like the weather in New England, wait a minute. If you can't find something you like in the world of Jewish music today, you don't like music."

First: full disclosure. Your trusty columnist is in fact an active Jewish musician who has been writing, performing, teaching, and recording Jewish music for almost 30 years. In 2005 I took on the mantle of artistic director of the New Jersey Jewish Music Festival. I have personal relationships with many of the top artists in the field and have collaborated with them at festivals around the world.

So this vehicle will not be a bully pulpit for ranting about the shortcomings of performers I don't much admire. Rather, I will use it as an opportunity to introduce you to the cream of the crop, the most innovative, entertaining, and stimulating music I can get my ears on.

I hope in the near future to have on-line audio clips available since, in the words of Elvis Costello (or was it Steve Martin?), "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

To start you off on your musical adventure, here are two Internet radio programs specializing in Jewish music: jmwc.org and live365.com (a favorite that plays eclectic round-the-clock programming).

So here's to cymbals, psalteries and harps, guitars, sackbuts and synthesizers — let's get listening!