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jewish-music
Re: dance
- From: Jonathan Zimet <jdz...>
- Subject: Re: dance
- Date: Sun 08 Dec 2002 19.10 (GMT)
Peace! You (all) don't seem to disagree about the substance;
only the terminology. People talk about "American Music" and that people
like Aaron Copland "do it." ((And that term is even more loaded -- USA
people exclude Canadian, Mexican, Central, South etc. from it !)}
This has all the same elements of multiplicity (and then some) as
"Sephardic" or "Ashkenazi music." For ex, I doubt many USA people knew
the hymn "Tis a Gift to be Simple" ... before Aaron Copland put it into
Appalacian Spring. And you have folk festivals (not composed
"folk-singer" songs) where people representing various regions or types of
music (say, Appalacian, Cajun, Blue-Grass) share their various types of
"American" folk music. And these share many fewer historical/cultural
elements than Sephardi. So Copland (and other creative musicians,
scholars, etc.) are "creating" American music just as much as Judith Brin
Ingber studies, assembles-creatively and depicts "Sephardic dance"
Or "Israeli dance" -- part of its beauty is its multiplicity in
one rubric ("U Pluribus Unum" in a non-USA context). It includes Romanian,
Yiddish, Yemenite, Kurdish, Greek, Arabic, cosmopolitan Western rock, etc.,
etc., [not that I'm so fond of the latter influence], and people find use
of the term "Israeli dance" very helpful to defining their thoughts and
activities.
I think a term like "Sephardic dance" is exactly a "collection of
different dance styles." True, many lay people are ignorant that
"Sephardi" can mean: just-Spanish-Port; or all of Jewry associated with
the Babylonian/Arabic hegemony; etc. But that stems from the multiple
usage of the term due to multiple historical causes . I think one problem
people have here may be the confusion of "Sephardic" with
"Sephardic" ;-) -- and calling the larger set "Sephardic dance" is but
a symptom of this other issue and history.
Jonathan
At 09:14 AM 12/8/02 -0500, you wrote:
>about "Sephardic music", it's true, as Yoram suggests: in theory if one
>can use that term as a generalization, one could say "Sephardic
>dance". . . . .
>But ok, if you like, the entire complex of what Sephardim have danced, I
>suppose could be called "Sephardic dance" as opposed to -
>what? Ashkenazi dance? But in that case, it would refer to a number of
>DIFFERENT dance styles, of which any one group would be unlikely to know
>another's (always with exceptions, travlling, living in a different
>community etc etc.) , not to any one identifiable form.