Oh, Mom, please, don't sing that old stuff!" Having just returned from California, I was walking ... more Oh, Mom, please, don't sing that old stuff!" Having just returned from California, I was walking my daughter to school recently, just behind a Korean mother with her son, perhaps seven or eight years old. She was singing a Korean song softly, with evident enjoyment; he wriggled and hopped about in an agony of embarrassment, repeating his opening plea in-as I later learned-both English and Korean. I said brightly, "You can sing it to me anytime: I'll learn it! "-and we began a conversation. My seven-year-old daughter chimed in disgustedly, "Oh, Mommy! Come on! You've just been home for a clay and you're already doing yucky ethnomusicology !" Why does my daughter so much like to sing the well-known Korean song "Toraji"? 1 Why did a group of Grade Four children sing this song as they walked home from school last spring? Why am I even aware of it being a well-known Korean song? Recently, I was awarded a small grant from the Ontario Arts Council's Ventures Fund to work on what I called a "community concert." Palmerston School's then Vice-Principal, Peter Hall, had tried to assemble a concert in which children and other members of the school community would participate. Almost all the musical contributions were in English, and I wondered what had happened to the school's considerable non-English speaking population. Did they not understand the notice which had gone home? Did they lack confidence? Were they simply accustomed to being relegated to marginal, after-school, "Heritage" programming? I decided to attempt a little "applied ethnomusicology." My original, rather grandiose vision was of a concert that would be the fruit of months of collaboration between me (the understanding, dialogically oriented ethnomusicologist/parent) and several other components of the school c()mmunity: parents, chilldren, grandparents, teachers, support staff. It would not be merely a one-time production; on its own momentum, this event somehow would become a regular part of school life. To a modest
The A. explores the use of Jewish and other music as an appropriation and an identity marker in t... more The A. explores the use of Jewish and other music as an appropriation and an identity marker in two imagined Jewish communities of two towns in Spain, Ribadavia and Hervas, and their festivals. She touches as well on some general issues: the anthropology of tourism, appropriation, authenticity, representation, and ownership. Underlying these issues is the ongoing question of whether considering representations such as those described by the A. as forms of cultural expression in their own right is really respectful to the cultural practitioners themselves. She takes a brief look at recent developments in scholarly approaches to tourism's impact on both traditional arts and perceptions of authenticity and of history. One scholarly trend reflects a growing aversion to any anthropological statement that resembles a value judgment: changes, even outright inventions, are not negative, they are transformations, or new cultural expressions. A different approach, much less apparent in an...
Proceedings of the Twelfth British Conference on Judeo-Spanish Studies, 24-26 June, 2001, 2004
... imagining Crypto-Jews in remote Portuguese mountains clinging to a sort of medieval proto-Lad... more ... imagining Crypto-Jews in remote Portuguese mountains clinging to a sort of medieval proto-Ladino, which they seem to think resembles such modern compositions as Adio Kerida or Flory Jagoda's Ocho kandelikas. 2 Judah and Tamar, collected by Judith R. Cohen, Belmonte ...
Innovation and stability, continuity and change, and shifting patterns of musical life are stock-... more Innovation and stability, continuity and change, and shifting patterns of musical life are stock-in-trades of today's ethnomusicologist. Few still posit and lament the ?persistent and reptitious 'isappearance' of social forms at the moment of their ethnographic repr?sentation? or restrict their concerns to a tradition's ?past, not its present or future? (Clifford: 112). Indeed, as Adelaida Reyes Schramm has recently said, ?surface change no longer signifies loss of identification?; a music can be ?transplanted? and ?still remain itself? (p. 4). How do these observations apply to Judeo-Spanish song? There seem to be different answers for various groups: scholars, performers, tradition bearers and consumers. With some exceptions, change and innovation in repertoire and performance practice in Judeo-Spanish song have not attracted the scholarly attention which they have basked in other musical traditions. There are some good reasons for this, but a gap, indeed a chasm, yawns between scholarly and ?consumer? perceptions of Judeo Spanish song: the ?newer? genres ?and performers? are at once the most neglected by academia and the most familiar to the general public. Shiloah and Cohen's (1983) refreshingly unsentimental typology of the dynamics of change in Israeli oriental music ??museumized?, ?concertized?, ?ethnie fine?, etc.? is a promising approach. However, while the authors distinguish between internal and external audiences, any discussion of contemporary Judeo-Spanish song demands a further distinction: between internal and external performers. While Judeo Spanish song is hardly unique in being in the throes of major changes, it is unusual in that such a high percentage of its influential mediated
Musica Ciudades Redes Recurso Electronico Creacion Musical E Interaccion Social Del 6 Al 9 De Marzo De 2008 Conservatorio Superior De Musica De Salamanca 2008 Isbn 978 84 612 7141 2, 2008
... 1992. Various art-ists. Several CD SCD-614. Frankel, Judy. 1990. Scalerica de Oro/Stainvay of... more ... 1992. Various art-ists. Several CD SCD-614. Frankel, Judy. 1990. Scalerica de Oro/Stainvay of Gold. ... 1976. Weltliche Musik um christlichen undjiidischen Spa-nien (1450-1550). Notes by Israel J. Katz. Re-flexe LP C163 30125/6. Jagoda, Flory. 1982. Kantikas de mi nona. ...
... Landarico," identified only by the local title "Andarleto mi An-darleto." Some... more ... Landarico," identified only by the local title "Andarleto mi An-darleto." Some songs listed as "traditional" in the credits are given to Flory Jagoda in her own songbook (The Flory Jagoda Songbook: Memories of ... Judith R. Cohen York University, Toronto/Independent Scholar
Educated as an ethnomusicologist, the author gained much familiarity with oral traditions; this i... more Educated as an ethnomusicologist, the author gained much familiarity with oral traditions; this in turn influenced her approach to the Cantigas de Santa Maria as a long-standing professional performer. Beliefs were formed, and questions raised regarding contemporary performance practice. Problems confronted include the relationship with audiences; conflicts between musical and textual accents; stylistic options and their cultural associations; the integrity of the song and the role of the refrain; the use of instruments; and contemporary appropriations under the «World Music» or «Fusion» labels. Some of the responses suggested by contemporary experience might also illuminate imagined performance practice in the medieval past.
This solid two-volume set offers a welcome and long-overdue collection of essays on various aspec... more This solid two-volume set offers a welcome and long-overdue collection of essays on various aspects of literatura de cordel and almost 500 pages of facsimiles from the pliegos collection of the Imprenta Hernando housed at the CSIC in Madrid.1 The chapbooks contain stories, sketches and songs on themes ranging from the pious through the melodramatic and the satirical. Luis Díaz Viana’s introduction provides a substantial overview of literatura de cordel and the history of attitudes toward and studies of the genre. He recalls Julio Caro Baroja’s characterization of it as a “infierno literario ” and discusses the juglar as a kind of “amphibion ” navigating between different registers of culture (I: 34). Díaz Viana goes on to resume and further develop themes at once related to chapbooks and broadsides, and, in a broader application, central to his thinking over the years, particularly challenging the concepts of the “traditional ” and the “popular”, and the very existence of “tradition...
This volume, in Spanish, is another welcome example of Weich-Shahak's continuing work documenting... more This volume, in Spanish, is another welcome example of Weich-Shahak's continuing work documenting, disseminating and providing accurate information about Judeo-Spanish song. Over eighty Moroccan Judeo-Spanish romances are fully transcribed (text and music) and annotated, with both textual and musical variants indicated. The selections are taken from Weich-Shahak's 1976-1994 fieldwork in Israel, deposited at the National Sound Archives (NSA) of the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; each item is identified with its NSA catalogue number. When Dr Weich-Shahak says "brief" ("breve"), she means it-for example, the history of Moroccan Sephardim is covered in under two pages. While it is refreshing to read a scholarly work which says what it means to say and then goes on to the next point or finishes, sometimes Weich-Shahak can be a little too concise, and a little more information and analysis would be welcome. A tantalizing brevity is a characteristic of the background notes altogether, including Díaz-Más' expert but very short introductory observations. But after all, this volume is subtitled "antología", not "estudio", so the notes can be taken as knowledgeable prologomena. The interested reader should read Weich-Shahak's earlier, and also later, work, covering various aspects of repertoire, social function, and musical analysis, as well as her documentary recordings (Weich-Shahak in "references", below; also Etzion and Weich-Shahak). In any case, Weich-Shahak certainly packs considerable solid information into relatively short texts; the section on melodic structure, for example, are particularly instructive. The text and music transcriptions are carried out and presented with the care and attention to detail which characterizes Weich-Shahak's work, and Díaz-Más' background notes on the texts are, as always, informative. The text transcriptions follow the CSIC system, and are explained clearly, though perhaps a table would be helpful for quick reference. The song transcriptions are well-laid out and easy to read. The incipit/title table at the end (191-202) is useful but appears to have been taken directly from a computer print-out and is not only difficult to read, its headings are actually in English: "theme", "incipit", "place", "code", "no." (number). There are very few typographical errors (e.g. "incuye" for "incluye", p. 27). Regrettably, as over the past several years Hispanists have finally been giving it its deserved serious attention, literatura de cordel has been excluded (except for one ballad; see p.14). The author does list the titles she has recorded, and explains that they are omitted from the anthology only because of the lengthy texts and the differences in structure, not because of value judgments. Still, including at least the melody and a couple of sample strophes, and a sample concordance (a full one would be too extensive) would be helpful, including for comparative ethnomusicological and textual purposes. On the other hand, we find
Lbutnrrc hoquc &S souvenin dr son amic, une fmmc scpharadr dr la Bosnic qui a VCEU &m unc rismc M... more Lbutnrrc hoquc &S souvenin dr son amic, une fmmc scpharadr dr la Bosnic qui a VCEU &m unc rismc Mohawk du Quibccpmdantplus dr m t r am.
La UNED en TVE-2 Seguimos tras los pasos del folklorista estadounidense Alan Lomax, y en esta oca... more La UNED en TVE-2 Seguimos tras los pasos del folklorista estadounidense Alan Lomax, y en esta ocasion nos centramos en su viaje al pueblo de Lagartera, en la provincia de Toledo, en el ano 1952. A Lagartera hemos llegado tarde. Las personas que grabo Lomax han fallecido o, debido a su avanzada edad o a la enfermedad, no pueden participar en este programa. Sus canciones nos transportan a otros tiempos, a otras formas de cantar, tocar y de vivir. "Musica de la Coleccion Alan Lomax, en el American Folklife Center, Biblioteca de Congreso. Utilizado con permiso de la Association for Cultural Equity." (ver enlaces)
Oh, Mom, please, don't sing that old stuff!" Having just returned from California, I was walking ... more Oh, Mom, please, don't sing that old stuff!" Having just returned from California, I was walking my daughter to school recently, just behind a Korean mother with her son, perhaps seven or eight years old. She was singing a Korean song softly, with evident enjoyment; he wriggled and hopped about in an agony of embarrassment, repeating his opening plea in-as I later learned-both English and Korean. I said brightly, "You can sing it to me anytime: I'll learn it! "-and we began a conversation. My seven-year-old daughter chimed in disgustedly, "Oh, Mommy! Come on! You've just been home for a clay and you're already doing yucky ethnomusicology !" Why does my daughter so much like to sing the well-known Korean song "Toraji"? 1 Why did a group of Grade Four children sing this song as they walked home from school last spring? Why am I even aware of it being a well-known Korean song? Recently, I was awarded a small grant from the Ontario Arts Council's Ventures Fund to work on what I called a "community concert." Palmerston School's then Vice-Principal, Peter Hall, had tried to assemble a concert in which children and other members of the school community would participate. Almost all the musical contributions were in English, and I wondered what had happened to the school's considerable non-English speaking population. Did they not understand the notice which had gone home? Did they lack confidence? Were they simply accustomed to being relegated to marginal, after-school, "Heritage" programming? I decided to attempt a little "applied ethnomusicology." My original, rather grandiose vision was of a concert that would be the fruit of months of collaboration between me (the understanding, dialogically oriented ethnomusicologist/parent) and several other components of the school c()mmunity: parents, chilldren, grandparents, teachers, support staff. It would not be merely a one-time production; on its own momentum, this event somehow would become a regular part of school life. To a modest
The A. explores the use of Jewish and other music as an appropriation and an identity marker in t... more The A. explores the use of Jewish and other music as an appropriation and an identity marker in two imagined Jewish communities of two towns in Spain, Ribadavia and Hervas, and their festivals. She touches as well on some general issues: the anthropology of tourism, appropriation, authenticity, representation, and ownership. Underlying these issues is the ongoing question of whether considering representations such as those described by the A. as forms of cultural expression in their own right is really respectful to the cultural practitioners themselves. She takes a brief look at recent developments in scholarly approaches to tourism's impact on both traditional arts and perceptions of authenticity and of history. One scholarly trend reflects a growing aversion to any anthropological statement that resembles a value judgment: changes, even outright inventions, are not negative, they are transformations, or new cultural expressions. A different approach, much less apparent in an...
Proceedings of the Twelfth British Conference on Judeo-Spanish Studies, 24-26 June, 2001, 2004
... imagining Crypto-Jews in remote Portuguese mountains clinging to a sort of medieval proto-Lad... more ... imagining Crypto-Jews in remote Portuguese mountains clinging to a sort of medieval proto-Ladino, which they seem to think resembles such modern compositions as Adio Kerida or Flory Jagoda's Ocho kandelikas. 2 Judah and Tamar, collected by Judith R. Cohen, Belmonte ...
Innovation and stability, continuity and change, and shifting patterns of musical life are stock-... more Innovation and stability, continuity and change, and shifting patterns of musical life are stock-in-trades of today's ethnomusicologist. Few still posit and lament the ?persistent and reptitious 'isappearance' of social forms at the moment of their ethnographic repr?sentation? or restrict their concerns to a tradition's ?past, not its present or future? (Clifford: 112). Indeed, as Adelaida Reyes Schramm has recently said, ?surface change no longer signifies loss of identification?; a music can be ?transplanted? and ?still remain itself? (p. 4). How do these observations apply to Judeo-Spanish song? There seem to be different answers for various groups: scholars, performers, tradition bearers and consumers. With some exceptions, change and innovation in repertoire and performance practice in Judeo-Spanish song have not attracted the scholarly attention which they have basked in other musical traditions. There are some good reasons for this, but a gap, indeed a chasm, yawns between scholarly and ?consumer? perceptions of Judeo Spanish song: the ?newer? genres ?and performers? are at once the most neglected by academia and the most familiar to the general public. Shiloah and Cohen's (1983) refreshingly unsentimental typology of the dynamics of change in Israeli oriental music ??museumized?, ?concertized?, ?ethnie fine?, etc.? is a promising approach. However, while the authors distinguish between internal and external audiences, any discussion of contemporary Judeo-Spanish song demands a further distinction: between internal and external performers. While Judeo Spanish song is hardly unique in being in the throes of major changes, it is unusual in that such a high percentage of its influential mediated
Musica Ciudades Redes Recurso Electronico Creacion Musical E Interaccion Social Del 6 Al 9 De Marzo De 2008 Conservatorio Superior De Musica De Salamanca 2008 Isbn 978 84 612 7141 2, 2008
... 1992. Various art-ists. Several CD SCD-614. Frankel, Judy. 1990. Scalerica de Oro/Stainvay of... more ... 1992. Various art-ists. Several CD SCD-614. Frankel, Judy. 1990. Scalerica de Oro/Stainvay of Gold. ... 1976. Weltliche Musik um christlichen undjiidischen Spa-nien (1450-1550). Notes by Israel J. Katz. Re-flexe LP C163 30125/6. Jagoda, Flory. 1982. Kantikas de mi nona. ...
... Landarico," identified only by the local title "Andarleto mi An-darleto." Some... more ... Landarico," identified only by the local title "Andarleto mi An-darleto." Some songs listed as "traditional" in the credits are given to Flory Jagoda in her own songbook (The Flory Jagoda Songbook: Memories of ... Judith R. Cohen York University, Toronto/Independent Scholar
Educated as an ethnomusicologist, the author gained much familiarity with oral traditions; this i... more Educated as an ethnomusicologist, the author gained much familiarity with oral traditions; this in turn influenced her approach to the Cantigas de Santa Maria as a long-standing professional performer. Beliefs were formed, and questions raised regarding contemporary performance practice. Problems confronted include the relationship with audiences; conflicts between musical and textual accents; stylistic options and their cultural associations; the integrity of the song and the role of the refrain; the use of instruments; and contemporary appropriations under the «World Music» or «Fusion» labels. Some of the responses suggested by contemporary experience might also illuminate imagined performance practice in the medieval past.
This solid two-volume set offers a welcome and long-overdue collection of essays on various aspec... more This solid two-volume set offers a welcome and long-overdue collection of essays on various aspects of literatura de cordel and almost 500 pages of facsimiles from the pliegos collection of the Imprenta Hernando housed at the CSIC in Madrid.1 The chapbooks contain stories, sketches and songs on themes ranging from the pious through the melodramatic and the satirical. Luis Díaz Viana’s introduction provides a substantial overview of literatura de cordel and the history of attitudes toward and studies of the genre. He recalls Julio Caro Baroja’s characterization of it as a “infierno literario ” and discusses the juglar as a kind of “amphibion ” navigating between different registers of culture (I: 34). Díaz Viana goes on to resume and further develop themes at once related to chapbooks and broadsides, and, in a broader application, central to his thinking over the years, particularly challenging the concepts of the “traditional ” and the “popular”, and the very existence of “tradition...
This volume, in Spanish, is another welcome example of Weich-Shahak's continuing work documenting... more This volume, in Spanish, is another welcome example of Weich-Shahak's continuing work documenting, disseminating and providing accurate information about Judeo-Spanish song. Over eighty Moroccan Judeo-Spanish romances are fully transcribed (text and music) and annotated, with both textual and musical variants indicated. The selections are taken from Weich-Shahak's 1976-1994 fieldwork in Israel, deposited at the National Sound Archives (NSA) of the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; each item is identified with its NSA catalogue number. When Dr Weich-Shahak says "brief" ("breve"), she means it-for example, the history of Moroccan Sephardim is covered in under two pages. While it is refreshing to read a scholarly work which says what it means to say and then goes on to the next point or finishes, sometimes Weich-Shahak can be a little too concise, and a little more information and analysis would be welcome. A tantalizing brevity is a characteristic of the background notes altogether, including Díaz-Más' expert but very short introductory observations. But after all, this volume is subtitled "antología", not "estudio", so the notes can be taken as knowledgeable prologomena. The interested reader should read Weich-Shahak's earlier, and also later, work, covering various aspects of repertoire, social function, and musical analysis, as well as her documentary recordings (Weich-Shahak in "references", below; also Etzion and Weich-Shahak). In any case, Weich-Shahak certainly packs considerable solid information into relatively short texts; the section on melodic structure, for example, are particularly instructive. The text and music transcriptions are carried out and presented with the care and attention to detail which characterizes Weich-Shahak's work, and Díaz-Más' background notes on the texts are, as always, informative. The text transcriptions follow the CSIC system, and are explained clearly, though perhaps a table would be helpful for quick reference. The song transcriptions are well-laid out and easy to read. The incipit/title table at the end (191-202) is useful but appears to have been taken directly from a computer print-out and is not only difficult to read, its headings are actually in English: "theme", "incipit", "place", "code", "no." (number). There are very few typographical errors (e.g. "incuye" for "incluye", p. 27). Regrettably, as over the past several years Hispanists have finally been giving it its deserved serious attention, literatura de cordel has been excluded (except for one ballad; see p.14). The author does list the titles she has recorded, and explains that they are omitted from the anthology only because of the lengthy texts and the differences in structure, not because of value judgments. Still, including at least the melody and a couple of sample strophes, and a sample concordance (a full one would be too extensive) would be helpful, including for comparative ethnomusicological and textual purposes. On the other hand, we find
Lbutnrrc hoquc &S souvenin dr son amic, une fmmc scpharadr dr la Bosnic qui a VCEU &m unc rismc M... more Lbutnrrc hoquc &S souvenin dr son amic, une fmmc scpharadr dr la Bosnic qui a VCEU &m unc rismc Mohawk du Quibccpmdantplus dr m t r am.
La UNED en TVE-2 Seguimos tras los pasos del folklorista estadounidense Alan Lomax, y en esta oca... more La UNED en TVE-2 Seguimos tras los pasos del folklorista estadounidense Alan Lomax, y en esta ocasion nos centramos en su viaje al pueblo de Lagartera, en la provincia de Toledo, en el ano 1952. A Lagartera hemos llegado tarde. Las personas que grabo Lomax han fallecido o, debido a su avanzada edad o a la enfermedad, no pueden participar en este programa. Sus canciones nos transportan a otros tiempos, a otras formas de cantar, tocar y de vivir. "Musica de la Coleccion Alan Lomax, en el American Folklife Center, Biblioteca de Congreso. Utilizado con permiso de la Association for Cultural Equity." (ver enlaces)
Uploads
Papers by Judith R Cohen