As a Jew, I am keenly aware of the diasporas that my people have experienced.  Firstly, of course, there was the diaspora out of Israel which imbued the Jewish people with a strong sense of a need for a homeland.  The diaspora that has most strongly influenced my family and many other Jewish families was the one out of Eastern Europe to the United States.  Music is a very important part of Judaism, from ceremonial uses in temple chanting to recreational uses such as Klezmer music.  As immigrants to New York City, my family probably went to many Yiddish theater performances.  The tradition of Yiddish theater grew out of Europe and was brought by Jews over to America in the diaspora.  Yiddish theater was very popular and led to many Jews becoming involved in theater, especially popular theater such as vaudeville. This has probably led to the stereotype of Jews running the media.  Playing music, and especially having a piano was a status symbol for Eastern European diasporic Jews, and that tradition has continued up to today—my grandparents and parents both own pianos, even though none of them can really play very well.  All of my siblings and I took music lessons, though only my little sister wanted piano lessons.    Many Jews became prominent within jazz music, such as Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, who both made strides in integrating swing bands.  I used to play a lot of jazz clarinet and so did my grandpa, who was very influenced by Goodman and Shaw and gave me a lot of their tapes when I was younger.
The Jewish emphasis on music and musical education has continued to this day.  Jews, of course, have been very important in rock music.  Bob Dylan and Lou Reed are both Jewish (though Dylan has since converted to Christianity) and so were Joey Ramone and Marc Bolan.  Matisyahu is an Orthodox Jewish reggae singer who puts a lot of Jewish themes in his music.  Music has been one of the ways that the Jewish people hve both retained and created an identity in the absence of a homeland.