Arab music and Shas

[Judith R Cohen <judithc...>]

hi, fascinating tidbit about Shas and the study of Arabic music.

> A somewhat related topic: it's my understanding that performers of
> traditional Iraqi music used to include many Jewish musicians.
> 

Jewish musicians have through the centuries been central figures in the
musical traditions of most Muslim countries where they have lived,
including Iraq (where people say the Radio Baghdadi Orchestra fell apart
after the Jews had to leave Iraq). 

>... had a problem reconciling the fact of the family having
> barely escaped an Iraqi pogrom (1941 i think), and them being so stuck on
> Arabic - anything ( music, language, food, clothes...) .

well, yes, (and of course there is the classic Wagner problem.) Most
Moroccan Jews I know enjoy Arab music, and ironically, while in Morocco
they may not have sought it out, in Montreal they have tended to use it
almost emblematically, at parties and community events, as if to
establish a non-Ashkenazi identity. 

I'm constantly annoyed with (though not threatened by) Quebec politics,
and disagree with many aspects of it, and know that there was severe
(though not physically dangerous usually) anti-Semitism in Quebec (my
father was part of the small Jewish quota allowed to study at McGill in
the early 1940's) - but that's never meant I don't both enjoy and
actively perform Quebecois traditional music....

cheer,s Judith

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