Musical Exodus

Following a trajectory from medieval Al-Andalus to present-day Israel via North Africa, Italy, Turkey and Syria, pausing for perspectives from Enlightenment Europe, Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas tells of diverse song and instrumental traditions born of the multiple musical encounters between Jews and their Muslim and Christian neighbors in different Mediterranean diasporas, and of the revival and renewal of those traditions in present-day Israel. Through this collection of essays from Philip V. Bohlman, Daniel Jutte, Tony Langlois, Piergabriele Mancuso, John O'Connell, Vanessa Paloma, Carmel Raz, Dwight Reynolds, Edwin Seroussi, and Jonathan Shannon, with opening and closing contributions by Ruth F. Davis and Stephen Blum, this team of distinguished ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, linguists and performers explore from multidisciplinary perspectives the complex and diverse processes and conditions of intercultural and intracultural musical encounter in Al-Andalus and its Mediterranean Jewish diasporas.
Individually and together the authors consider how musical traditions acquired new functions and meanings in different social, political and diasporic contexts, they explore the historic role of Jewish musicians as cultural intermediaries between the different faith communities, and they consider how music is implicated in projects of remembering and forgetting as societies come to terms with mass exodus by reconstructing their narratives of the past.