[HANASHIR:5857] Re: Ancient music bank?

[Judah Cohen <jcohen...>]

Rachelle,

    Once you change the nomenclature of what you're talking about, there's
certainly a place that holds such recordings.  The romantic idea of
recording "dying" musical traditions was one of the major reasons
ethnomusicology became a field in the first place.  Jews were strongly
involved in such "preservation" attempts from the very beginning, helping to
set up archives of recordings in Berlin and Vienna around the turn of the
century.  And sure enough, an archive for "traditional Jewish music"
recordings was founded in Israel in the 1920s [give or take about fifteen
years; I don't have the date on me] and is now part of the National sound
archive at the Givat Ram campus of Hebrew U.  Gila Flam is the director of
the archive there, which houses several thousand recordings of "traditional"
Jewish music.  Among others, Judith Wachs of the Sephardic music group Voice
of the Turtle has done repertoire research there.

    Also, for what it's worth:  in general, what you describe (and what this
man sings) is more comfortably called "traditional" music in scholarly
circles (though this term is vague and has its own problems, it is still
used with frequency).  In this way, the music need not prove its age (which,
in light of research on Ashkenazic melodies, might turn out to be quite
disappointing), allowing it to be appreciated for the richness of the
musical tradition it represents in *this* generation.

Be well.
Judah.

----------
From: "Rachelle and Howard Shubert" <notfranz (at) total(dot)net>
To: "Hanashir" <hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org>
Subject: [HANASHIR:5854] Ancient music bank?
Date: Wed, Apr 26, 2000, 1:28 AM


We have in our congregation an elderly man from Egypt who can beautifully
sing hundreds of ancient prayer melodies and trope.  A congregant has
suggested a recording project to document these dying melodies.  She is
wondering if a Jewish music bank or project to preserve such melodies from
dwindling Jewish communities already exists.

Thanks,
Rachelle Shubert
notfranz (at) total(dot)net <mailto:notfranz (at) total(dot)net>

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