eSefarad Noticias del Mundo Sefaradi
Written and recorded traces from Jewish Tangier
Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies
Tangier Medina
A handwritten songbook by Alia Isaac Cohen from 1934 Tangier and a recording from 1929 of two women from Tangier singing traditional ballads and speaking in Haketía will be at the core of the discussion between Dr. Hilary Pomeroy (University College London) and Vanessa Paloma Elbaz (INALCO – Sorbonne Paris Cité).
Eighty years ago Alia Isaac Cohen dated her songbook filled with Romances (Ballads) from the oral tradition. Dr. Pomeroy published an edition and commentary of her songbook in 2005, where she explores the connections that this Moroccan Tangerine matriarch had with the literary tradition from medieval and renaissance Europe.
In 1929, Zarita Nahón recorded Simi Nahón de Toledano in New York while a student of Franz Boas. This recording has been archived at Indiana University’s Archive of Traditional Music. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz (who finished her graduate work in Indiana in 1996) discovered during her research of the Romances of Northern Morocco that her alma mater housed this historic archive and secured a copy to bring back to Morocco to form part of KHOYA: Jewish Morocco Sound Archive. This recording has never been heard publicly in Morocco and is a rare glimpse into the musical sound of Jewish women from the early twentieth century.
These two scholars will present the written and recorded traces of the Ballads from Tangier and discuss their similarities and differences.
Please join us Friday, 23 May, at 10:00 AM, and pass the word to your friends who might be interested.
http://vanessapaloma.com
http://vanessapaloma.blogspot.com
Hadassah Brandeis Institute
Research Associate
Women’s Studies Research Center
at Brandeis University
Ph.D. Candidate
CERMOM – INALCO
Sorbonne Paris Cité
Founder and Director
KHOYA: Jewish Morocco Sound Archive
131 Bd. D’Anfa
Casablanca, Morocco
Senior Fulbright Research Scholar and Artist Morocco 2007-2008
Tangier/Tetouan
