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"The Migration of Memory", Jewish Music Forum, NYC, May 12

The Jewish Music Forum, a project of the American Society for Jewish Music at the Center for Jewish History is pleased to announce the following presentation:

The Migration of Memory: New Contexts for Mizrahi and Bukharian Musical Poetic Traditions in Israel and the United States

Evan Rapport (CUNY) and Galeet Dardashti (University of Texas at Austin)
Respondent: Mark Kligman (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute, New York)

Friday, May 12
10 A.M.
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York, NY

Admission is free and open to the public

For information on this or other events of the Jewish Music Forum, please see the website: www.jewishmusicforum.org, call 212-294-8328 or

What happens when Middle Eastern and Central Asian Jewish communities are uprooted and resettled in the radically new cultural contexts of the United States and Israel? How do technology, immigration, and politics affect the ways in which music transmits Jewish collective memory? What accounts for the dramatic, growing interest in Middle Eastern folk and liturgical music in contemporary Israel? Scholars Evan Rapport and Galeet Dardashti present twin perspectives on these and other related questions based on their recently completed fieldwork projects among Mizrahi and Bukharian Jewish communities in the United States and Israel.

Evan Rapport received his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the CUNY Graduate Center. His dissertation, on the music of the Bukharian Jewish community in Queens, earned a Goldie and David Blanksteen Dissertation Award from the Center for Jewish Studies (CUNY), and was nominated for a Barry S. Brook Dissertation Award in Music for the 2006-2007 academic year. He is co-editor of a volume on hip-hop entitled Critical Minded, and is currently vice-president of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society of Ethnomusicology.

Galeet Dardashti is an anthropologist, accomplished singer, and hazzan. As a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, she is completing her dissertation on the cultural politics of Mizrahi and Arab ethnic music in Israel. She recently returned from conducting her dissertation research in Israel, which was funded by fellowships from Fulbright-Hays, The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.

Mark Kligman, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Jewish Musicology at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York where he teaches in the School of Sacred Music. A specialist in the liturgical traditions of Middle Eastern Jewish communities, Dr. Kligman has published several articles on the liturgy of Syrian Jews and the entry on "Music in Judaism" in The Encyclopedia of Judaism (2000). He is the founding Academic Chair of the Jewish Music Forum.

For information on this or other events of the Jewish Music Forum, please see the website: www.jewishmusicforum.org, call 212-294-8328 or |

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