Hebrewizing Jewish Music? Disarticulating Zionism in Early Israeli Art Music
Talk by Dr. Assaf Shelleg
Tuesday, April 8, 4:30 PM - Yale University
While the historiography of Israeli art music promoted formulations that rang the bells- and-whistles of the Zionist project, the early years of Israeli statehood found composers grappling with musical imageries of the Zionist self and the mechanism that sought to westernize and secularize non-western Jewish music. Yet it was exactly composers’ adaptation of the musical properties of Arab Jewish oral musical traditions that saw the entropy and dilution of national musical markers in the 1950s, thereby signaling the severing of music from its national function and catalyzing a dialectical return to exilic Jewish cultures.
Dr. Assaf Shelleg is the Schusterman Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology & Jewish Studies in the Department of Religious Studies and the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia. He was previously the visiting Efroymson Scholar in the Jewish, Islamic & Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department at Washington University in St. Louis. Shelleg specializes in twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli art music and his research has been published in some of the leading journals in both musicology and Israel Studies. A trained pianist, he is also a regular musical contributor to Ha’aretz newspaper. Shelleg’s book, Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History, is scheduled to come out this summer with Oxford University Press.
The Jewish Music Forum is a project of the American Society for Jewish Music, with the support of the American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History. Founded in 2004, the Jewish Music Forum is now in its ninth season.
With additional support from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music; the Judaic Studies Program at Yale; the Modern Hebrew Studies Program at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale; the Council on Middle East Studies at the MacMillan Center; and the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. Visit www.yale.edu/macmillan/cmes for more information.
Admission is free: To reserve a seat, please visit http://www.jewishmusicforum.org/.
Dr. Assaf Shelleg is the Schusterman Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology & Jewish Studies in the Department of Religious Studies and the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia. He was previously the visiting Efroymson Scholar in the Jewish, Islamic & Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department at Washington University in St. Louis. Shelleg specializes in twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli art music and his research has been published in some of the leading journals in both musicology and Israel Studies. A trained pianist, he is also a regular musical contributor to Ha’aretz newspaper. Shelleg’s book, Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History, is scheduled to come out this summer with Oxford University Press.
The Jewish Music Forum is a project of the American Society for Jewish Music, with the support of the American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History. Founded in 2004, the Jewish Music Forum is now in its ninth season.
With additional support from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music; the Judaic Studies Program at Yale; the Modern Hebrew Studies Program at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale; the Council on Middle East Studies at the MacMillan Center; and the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. Visit www.yale.edu/macmillan/cmes for more information.
Admission is free: To reserve a seat, please visit http://www.jewishmusicforum.org/.