The Jewish Music Forum is an organization devoted to the study of music in Jewish life in all of its historical and contemporary diversity.  Founded in the fall of 2004 under the auspices of the American Society for Jewish Music , with the support of the American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History ,the Jewish Music Forum seeks to provide a thriving habitat for interdisciplinary dialogue and scholarly exchange in the growing academic field of Jewish musical studies as well as a criticalintellectual resource for specialists across a spectrum that includes cantors, composers, performers, students, educators, artistic directors, journalists, and others from the fields of musicology, anthropology, literature, Jewish studies, and American studies. By linking together members of these communities, the Forum serves as an academic professional network and intellectual resource for all who are interested in the role of music in Jewish life.

2009-10 SEASON

Our next event of the season:

April 15, 2010
Northwestern University
Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music
Evanston, Illinois
4:00 P.M.
"Imaginaries of Exile and Emergence in Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Hip-Hop"
Dr. David A. McDonald, Indiana University
Respondent: Dr. Edwin Seroussi, Jewish Music Research Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This event is FREE to the public. 

"Imaginaries of Exile and Emergence in Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Hip-Hop" Over the last decade, the expansion of Hip-Hop among Jewish and Palestinian communities in Israel has created a diverse repertory of politically minded music and other expressive media. And while Israeli artists from across the political spectrum have utilized Hip-Hop as a powerful forum for expressing fundamental issues of identity, rarely have such efforts extended beyond the entrenched discourses of the nation-state. Rooted in the poetics of the primordial nation in exile such media reinforce a “dual society paradigm” that positions Jews and Palestinians as discrete national communities engaged in an intractable struggle for hegemony. In contrast to this scenario, however, a group of Israeli (Jewish and Palestinian) Hip-Hop artists—Invincible, DAM, Sabreena Da Witch, and others—have begun touring internationally to raise awareness on myriad social and political issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Through film screenings, panel discussions, and collaborative music performances, these artists articulate a post-colonial discourse of emergence that resists boundaries, and explores the shared cultural and historical connections between and within various communities. In this paper, I attempt to situate the work of these artists within the broader history of Israeli and Palestinian Hip-Hop, focusing specifically on the performative interplay of these two discursive strategies: exile and emergence. I suggest that the discursive shift from exile to emergence embodied in the work of these artists presents a unique re-imagining of the dominant nation-state discourse, and offers new opportunities for interrogating the dynamics of power, hegemony, and popular culture in the Middle East. The consequences for such a shift allow for a reconceptualization of the Israeli state inclusive of all its citizens, and the emergence of a new body-politic in a post-national world.

Dr. David A. McDonald Assistant Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. His research interests include violence, popular culture, performance studies, and the music and dance of Palestinian communities in Israel, Jordan, and the Occupied Territories. His forthcoming book, My Voice is My Weapon: Music, Nationalism, and the Poetics of Palestinian Resistance is scheduled for release from Duke University Press in 2011.

Edwin Seroussi,Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology and Director of the Jewish Music Research Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2000, was born in Montevideo, Uruguay and immigrated to Israel in 1971. Held lectureships at the Department of Musicology of Tel-Aviv University and at Levinsky Teachers' College in Tel-Aviv, before his full time appointment at Bar-Ilan University in 1990, where he was head of the Department of Music from 1994 to 1998. Was visiting professor at Binghamton University (New York, 1992/3) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1998/9).
His works include: “Schir Hakawod and the Liturgical Music Reforms in the Sephardi Community in Vienna, ca. 1881-1925”, Ph.D. diss. University of California, Los Angeles (1988); Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue Music in Nineteenth-century Reform Sources from Hamburg: Ancient Tradition in the Dawn of Modernity (Jerusalem 1996); Cancionero sefardí by Alberto Hemsi (Jerusalem 1995); Mizimrat Qedem: The Life and Music of R. Isaac Algazi from Turkey (Jerusalem 1989) and more than forty articles on diverse aspects of Sephardi music traditions. In the past years he has also researched the popular music of Israel. His book (co-written with Motti Regev) Popular Music and National Culture in Israel was published by the University of California Press in 2004. He contributed articles on Jewish and Israeli music for major music encyclopedias such as The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Revised Edition and the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. He founded and edits Yuval: Music Series of the Jewish Music Research Center. Edited several CDs of Jewish music, e.g. Titgadal ve-titkadash betokh Yerushalayim - Jerusalem in Hebrew Prayers and Songs (Wergo, Berlin 1996) and Chants judéo-espagnols de la Mediterraneé orientale (Inedit, Paris 1994).

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Click here to view PDF - Complete list of presenters:
JMF Lecture Series Jan. 2005 to April 2010

The Jewish Music Forum lecture/discussion series gratefully acknowledges the support of
the American Society for Jewish Music and the American Jewish Historical Society,
at the Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York City

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Last updated: September 08, 2006.