Jewish Music Web Center Announcements

New Jewish Music Forum

The Jewish Music Forum, a new initiative of the American Society for Jewish Music, an affiliate of the American Jewish Historical Society at the Center for Jewish History, is pleased to announce its inaugural academic seminar series. This ongoing seminar will feature leading scholars presenting new research findings and theoretical contributions to the academic study of Jewish music. All events are free and open to the public.

Jewish Music Forum
Spring 2005 Academic Seminar
"The Study of Music in Jewish Life"

January 28
Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music at Harvard University, Inaugural Lecture, "Memory and History in Jewish Music"

February 11
Professor Edwin Seroussi, Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, "Studying Jewish Music in Israel: Achievements, Failures and Challenges for the Future" Guest chair and respondent: Professor Stephen Blum, City University of New York

March 11
Professor Judah M. Cohen, New York University, "Who Will Reclaim the Golden Sounds?: Judaism, Tradition, and Music Scholarship in an American Context" Guest chair and respondent: Professor Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University

April 8
Professor Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, "Beyond Yiddishland: New Studies from the Jewish Musical Mediterranean" Guest chair and respondent: Professor Uri Sharvit, Bar-Ilan University

May 13
James Loeffler, Columbia University, "Between Wissenschaft and Etnografiia: The Search for a Jewish Musical Science in Eurasia, Past and Present" Guest chair and respondent: Dr. Ludmila Sholokhova, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

All session will take place on Friday mornings, beginning at 10:00 AM at the Center for Jewish History. Please RSVP to the American Society for Jewish Music at asjm@cjh.orgor
212-294-8328.
Introducing the Jewish Music Forum The American Society for Jewish Music (ASJM) is pleased to announce the formation of a major new project, the Jewish Music Forum (JMF). Taking its name and inspiration from an earlier chapter of ASJM's history, the new Jewish Music Forum will serve both as a regular meeting place and an international network for scholars and researchers who are actively studying Jewish music, as well as a key cultural resource for artists and educators creating new Jewish music today. The Jewish Music Forum (JMF) will concentrate on three main areas of activity. First, JMF will host an annual series of regular academic seminars at the Center for Jewish History, where AJHS is a partner and ASJM an affiliate organization. There, participants will come together to present new research findings, theories and works-in-progress for an audience of scholars, graduate students and other interested Jewish music specialists. The aim will be to build up a core group of New York-based participants representing interdisciplinary interests who will be joined by visiting researchers. New media technology will allow these sessions to be recorded and archived on DVDs for interested individuals and academic institutions well beyond New York. Beyond this series of academic seminars, JMF will work together with performers, educators and composers to complement the fruits of academic labor and create artistic programs for the general public. The academic seminars will be coordinated with concerts and workshops held at the Center for Jewish History and elsewhere, providing the public an opportunity to experience both the rich diversity of Jewish music and the important, revealing efforts of Jewish music scholarship. The JMF will aim to support and amplify the efforts of the journal Musica Judaica to bring original academic research to a wide audience. Finally, in the interest of promoting the study of Jewish music in larger American and international academic circles, JMF will also join in sponsoring events and forums at academic conferences, such as annual meetings of the Association for Jewish Studies, the American Musicological Society and the Society for Ethnomusicology. JMF will also serve as the American affiliate of the Jewish Music Research Centre of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. These efforts will serve to promote awareness of the important research going on in the field of Jewish music today. By linking up scholars of Jewish music from disciplines ranging from musicology to anthropology to history and beyond, JMF intends to develop a professional network of specialists in Jewish music, who can serve as resources to each other and the different communities where they live, work and teach. To lead the project, the American Society for Jewish Music has named James Loeffler of Columbia University as Executive Director of the Jewish Music Forum, ASJM Board Member Mark Kligman of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion as Academic Chair, and Judah M. Cohen of New York University as Vice-Academic Chair. They are joined as well by a steering committee comprised of leading scholars from the United States and Israel. Together this team has assembled the schedule for the first semester of academic programs centered on the series of academic seminars to be held at the Center for Jewish History beginning in January 2005. For further information about the activities of the Jewish Music Forum, please contact the American Society for Jewish Music by email at asjm@cjh.org or telephone at 212-294-8328. "The Study of Music in Jewish Life" Seminar Jan. - May 2005 The study of Jewish music has its roots in the nineteenth century European Wissenschaft tradition. The first studies of Jewish music initially centered on the European Jewish liturgical music, with the prime focus on the Ashkenazic tradition and only occasional forays into Western Sephardic traditions. At the turn of the twentieth century the field grew significantly through major individual and collective efforts in Central and Eastern Europe as well as Palestine. Studies of artistic and folk traditions came to form part of the burgeoning academic fields of European musicology and ethnomusicology. The first attempts at global views of Jewish music also began to appear in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Idelsohn's Jewish Music in Its Historical Development (1929) is one early prime example. During the course of the twentieth century studies of Jewish music have become more specifically delineated with attempts to uncover specific aspects of a regional or single tradition rather than a comprehensive global view. Contemporary studies of Jewish music cover a wide geographic area documenting various traditions around the world and are situated within one or more disciplines, including musicology, ethnomusicology, Judaic studies, linguistics, anthropology and history. In addition, the emphasis in recent decades on interdisciplinary studies has opened new opportunities and new challenges for scholars. This first seminar series will thus focus on questions of the historical development of methodology and discipline in the study of Jewish music. Posted by jmwc at January 4, 2005 10:34 AM