Kay Kaufman Shelemay
Biographic Data
| ID | 105253 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kay Kaufman Shelemay |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kay Kaufman |
| FAMILY NAME | Shelemay |
| SIGNATURE | SHELEMAY K K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 113 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Excerpt from Sing and Sing On: Sentinel Musicians and the Making of the Ethiopian American Diaspora
Author(s): Shelemay, Kay Kaufman | Abstract: “Communities,” from SING AND SING ON by Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Used by permission of The University of Chicago Press. © 2022 by The University of Chicago. All Rights Reserved
Sing and Sing On: Sentinel Musicians and the Making of the Ethiopian American Diaspora
Sing and Sing On: Sentinel Musicians and the Making of the Ethiopian American Diaspora
Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project
This volume of essays both seeks to take an innovative approach to music history and has an unusual history of its own. In 2012 musicologist Reinhard Strohm received the Balzan Prize from the International Balzan Prize Foundation (Milan/Zurich), an award presented to major scholars and scientists with the intention that half of their prize money should be used to support midcareer researchers working on a specified program. Strohm, as project lea…
Ethnography as a Way of Life
While ethnomusicologists have long acknowledged ethnography's problematic intellectual heritage, as well as the power asymmetries that arise in the field, they don't always consider the power and longevity of the ethnographic processes they set into motion. This article, the 2018 Charles Seeger Lecture, revised for publication, takes into account the impact of the lived experience that reshapes both the ethnographer's and research associate's per…
Ethiopia. African Funk, Soul & Swing from Addis Ababa. The Rough Guide to the Music of Ethiopia
Book Review| February 01 2011 Ethiopia. African Funk, Soul & Swing from Addis Ababa. The Rough Guide to the Music of Ethiopia Ethiopia. African Funk, Soul & Swing from Addis Ababa. The Rough Guide to the Music of Ethiopia. 2004. London: World Music Network. Recordings and commentary by Francis Falceto. One compact disc. Booklet (2 pp.) in English. Kay Kaufman Shelemay Kay Kaufman Shelemay Harvard University Search for other works by this author o…
Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music
This essay discusses the study of musical communities, taking as its point of departure the growing avoidance of the term "community" within much of recent musical scholarship. After exploring factors that have been responsible for the move away from community studies, the paper details both the creation of new nomenclature and the discourse surrounding the introduction of these new terms. Based on insights drawn from musical ethnography with rec…
L’impact et l’éthique du savoir musical
Cet article discute l’impact potentiel du savoir musical dans le vaste monde en dehors de l’université. En retraçant l’impact en cours d’un seul cas d’étude ethnomusicologique, l’article éclaire les questions politiques et éthiques qui resteraient amorphes si elles étaient uniquement approchées à un niveau théorique. L’article invite les universitaires en musique à considérer les façons à travers lesquelles leurs travaux ont le potentiel de trans…
Sounding [the] Ethical
Liam Frink is contributing editor of "Ethical Currents," the AAA Committee on Ethics column in Anthropology News. Keywords: ethical currents, ethnomusicology, sound, ethical sound
Performing the humanities at the Ethiopian Millennium
Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture
Ethiopian Musical Invention in Diaspora: A Tale of Three Musicians
This essay, based on ethnographic interviews and observation, discusses the lives and careers of three prominent Ethiopian musicians from sacred, folkloric, and popular musical domains (Moges Seyoum, Tesfaye Lemma, and Mulatu Astatke, respectively) whose individual initiatives have shaped the musical life of the Ethiopian diaspora during its formative years in the United States. These three careers provide an overview of musical activity within t…
Music, Memory and History
This paper explores the interactive relationship of memory and history during the ethnographic research process, using as its case study interviews with Syrian Jews about a hymn (pizmon) repertory. The paper uses strategies of the new historicism as well as concepts from psychology, literary theory and anthropology to explore ways in which ethnomusicologists are instrumental both in eliciting memories and in constructing historical narratives
Jewish Music
Ethiopia, Federal Democratic Republic of
Jewish music: Liturgical and paraliturgical, Ethiopia (Beta Israel/Falasha)
Jewish music: Liturgical and paraliturgical, 20th-century developments
Toward an Ethnomusicology of the Early Music Movement: Thoughts on Bridging Disciplines and Musical Worlds
space among the disciplines. Triangulating between the arts, humanities, and the social sciences, ethnomusicology has long held the ambiguous, middle ground between historical musicology and anthropology. If anthropology provided the methodological tools for musical ethnography, a heterogeneous world of musical performance contributed the sounds, settings, and significances that ethnomusicologists have sought to document and understand. Yet while…
Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant
Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews
Let Jasmine Rain down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews
Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews
Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews
When Jews left Aleppo, Syria, in the early-20th century and established communities abroad, they carried with them a repertory of songs (pizmonim) with sacred Hebrew texts set to melodies borrrowed from the popular Middle Eastern Arab musical tradition. This text tells the story of the pizmonim as they have continued to be composed, performed and transformed through the present day; it is thus an ethnography of an important Judeo-Arabic musical t…
The Ethnomusicologist, Ethnographic Method, and the Transmission of Tradition
However else they may identify themselves and each other, fieldworker and subject are first and foremost human beings. It is this shared identity that makes field work, with both its problems and its accomplishments, a meaningful mode of mutual learning. Most ethnomusicological discussions of the transmission of tradition attempt to document and interpret the manner in which music is communicated over time within a particular setting, giving atte…
Crossing Boundaries in Music and Musical Scholarship: A Perspective from Ethnomusicology
Journal Article Crossing Boundaries in Music and Musical Scholarship: A Perspective from Ethnomusicology Get access Kay Kaufman Shelemay Kay Kaufman Shelemay Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Musical Quarterly, Volume 80, Issue 1, Spring 1996, Pages 13–30, https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/80.1.13 Published: 01 March 1996
Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music
This essay discusses the study of musical communities, taking as its point of departure the growing avoidance of the term "community" within much of recent musical scholarship. After exploring factors that have been responsible for the move away from community studies, the paper details both the creation of new nomenclature and the discourse surrounding the introduction of these new terms. Based on insights drawn from musical ethnography with rec…
Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews
When Jews left Aleppo, Syria, in the early-20th century and established communities abroad, they carried with them a repertory of songs (pizmonim) with sacred Hebrew texts set to melodies borrrowed from the popular Middle Eastern Arab musical tradition. This text tells the story of the pizmonim as they have continued to be composed, performed and transformed through the present day; it is thus an ethnography of an important Judeo-Arabic musical t…
Toward an Ethnomusicology of the Early Music Movement: Thoughts on Bridging Disciplines and Musical Worlds
space among the disciplines. Triangulating between the arts, humanities, and the social sciences, ethnomusicology has long held the ambiguous, middle ground between historical musicology and anthropology. If anthropology provided the methodological tools for musical ethnography, a heterogeneous world of musical performance contributed the sounds, settings, and significances that ethnomusicologists have sought to document and understand. Yet while…
Music, Memory and History
This paper explores the interactive relationship of memory and history during the ethnographic research process, using as its case study interviews with Syrian Jews about a hymn (pizmon) repertory. The paper uses strategies of the new historicism as well as concepts from psychology, literary theory and anthropology to explore ways in which ethnomusicologists are instrumental both in eliciting memories and in constructing historical narratives
The Ethnomusicologist and the Transmission of Tradition
Research Article| January 01 1996 The Ethnomusicologist and the Transmission of Tradition Kay Kaufman Shelemay Kay Kaufman Shelemay Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Musicology (1996) 14 (1): 35-51. https://doi.org/10.2307/763956 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permi…
Music, Ritual and Falasha History
Music, Ritual and Falasha History
Performance Practice: Ethnomusicological Perspectives
Historical Ethnomusicology: Reconstructing Falasha Liturgical History
In recent decades, the concerns of our discipline have grown from analyzing music as sound phenomenon to approaching sound as an integral part of a particular cultural system. We have become aware that musical is cultural knowledge (Hoffman 1978:69). Yet, we do not often enough employ the insights gained through studies of living music cultures to better understand their pasts. The subject here is what may be termed ethnomusicology.l Although a r…
L’impact et l’éthique du savoir musical
Cet article discute l’impact potentiel du savoir musical dans le vaste monde en dehors de l’université. En retraçant l’impact en cours d’un seul cas d’étude ethnomusicologique, l’article éclaire les questions politiques et éthiques qui resteraient amorphes si elles étaient uniquement approchées à un niveau théorique. L’article invite les universitaires en musique à considérer les façons à travers lesquelles leurs travaux ont le potentiel de trans…
Crossing Boundaries in Music and Musical Scholarship: A Perspective from Ethnomusicology
Journal Article Crossing Boundaries in Music and Musical Scholarship: A Perspective from Ethnomusicology Get access Kay Kaufman Shelemay Kay Kaufman Shelemay Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Musical Quarterly, Volume 80, Issue 1, Spring 1996, Pages 13–30, https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/80.1.13 Published: 01 March 1996
Response to Rice
In his essay developing a model for ethnomusicology, Rice critically examines an old model commonly associated with Alan Merriam and The Anthropology of Music, one that has guided our field for more than two decades. In doing so, Rice isolates what he sees as the central problems with Merriam's model. Throughout his essay, Rice uses these problems as starting points and, at times, justifications for his own arguments. In responding to Rice, I fee…
Ethnography as a Way of Life
While ethnomusicologists have long acknowledged ethnography's problematic intellectual heritage, as well as the power asymmetries that arise in the field, they don't always consider the power and longevity of the ethnographic processes they set into motion. This article, the 2018 Charles Seeger Lecture, revised for publication, takes into account the impact of the lived experience that reshapes both the ethnographer's and research associate's per…
African Musicology: Current Trends
Music, Ritual, and Falasha History
Performing the humanities at the Ethiopian Millennium
The Musician and Transmission of Religious Tradition: The Multiple Roles of the Ethiopian Dabtara
Ethiopia presents an unusually complex profile both in terms of the diversity of religious practice within the country and the interaction between belief systems which on the surface appear to be separate. Officially a Christian state from the date of the conversion of the Ethiopian emperor by a Syrian missionary about the year 332 A.D. until the overthrow of the modern monarchy during a revolution that began in 1974, Ethiopia has also provided f…
Together in the Field: Team Research among Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, New York
Dans le contexte d'un projet plus global de recherche en ethnomusicologie urbaine, l'A. presente ici la methodologie et les premiers resultats d'une enquete sur la communaute de Juifs syriens ayant conserve la tradition des hymnes para-liturgiques pizmonim , qui associent des textes hebreux et des melodies issus de la tradition populaire arabe
A Quarter-Century in the Life of a Falasha Prayer
The liturgy of the Falasha of Ethiopia has existed as an oral tradition throughout its history. Although the source and date of origin of the liturgy are the subject of frequent speculation, there is no evidence that a system of musical notation has ever been used. Therefore, when studying this liturgy, the researcher is confined to the experiences of living informants and to the current liturgy
Historical Ethnomusicology: Reconstructing Falasha Liturgical History
In recent decades, the concerns of our discipline have grown from analyzing music as sound phenomenon to approaching sound as an integral part of a particular cultural system. We have become aware that musical is cultural knowledge (Hoffman 1978:69). Yet, we do not often enough employ the insights gained through studies of living music cultures to better understand their pasts. The subject here is what may be termed ethnomusicology.l Although a r…
Performance Practice: Ethnomusicological Perspectives
Jewish Music; Israel; Ethiopia
Sacred sound: Music in Religious Thought and Practice
Whether music's appeal to the senses detracts from or contributes to devotion is an important question for all religious traditions. This interdisciplinary, cross-cultural collection is intended as a first step towards a phenomenology of religious music. Topics range from the mystical strain in Jewish liturgical music to music in the Theravada Buddhist heritage. Contributors include Lois Ibsen al Faruqi, Bruce B. Lawrence, John Ross Carter, and D…
Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews. Vol. 2: Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Oral Tradition. 1: Epic Ballads
Response to Rice
In his essay developing a model for ethnomusicology, Rice critically examines an old model commonly associated with Alan Merriam and The Anthropology of Music, one that has guided our field for more than two decades. In doing so, Rice isolates what he sees as the central problems with Merriam's model. Throughout his essay, Rice uses these problems as starting points and, at times, justifications for his own arguments. In responding to Rice, I fee…
Pizmon: Syrian-Jewish Religious and Social Song
"Falasha" Religion: Ancient Judaism or Evolving Ethiopian Tradition
Music, Ritual and Falasha History
Together in the Field: Team Research among Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, New York
Dans le contexte d'un projet plus global de recherche en ethnomusicologie urbaine, l'A. presente ici la methodologie et les premiers resultats d'une enquete sur la communaute de Juifs syriens ayant conserve la tradition des hymnes para-liturgiques pizmonim , qui associent des textes hebreux et des melodies issus de la tradition populaire arabe
Music, Ritual and Falasha History
Music, Ritual, and Falasha History
Music, Ritual, and Falasha History
African Musicology: Current Trends
Music, Ritual, and Falasha History
Music, Ritual, and Falasha History
General/Theoretical Anthropology: Ethnomusicology and Modern Music History . Stephen Blum, Philip V. Bohlman , and Daniel M. Neuman , eds
The Musician and Transmission of Religious Tradition: The Multiple Roles of the Ethiopian Dabtara
Ethiopia presents an unusually complex profile both in terms of the diversity of religious practice within the country and the interaction between belief systems which on the surface appear to be separate. Officially a Christian state from the date of the conversion of the Ethiopian emperor by a Syrian missionary about the year 332 A.D. until the overthrow of the modern monarchy during a revolution that began in 1974, Ethiopia has also provided f…
The Ethnomusicologist, Ethnographic Method, and the Transmission of Tradition
However else they may identify themselves and each other, fieldworker and subject are first and foremost human beings. It is this shared identity that makes field work, with both its problems and its accomplishments, a meaningful mode of mutual learning. Most ethnomusicological discussions of the transmission of tradition attempt to document and interpret the manner in which music is communicated over time within a particular setting, giving atte…
Crossing Boundaries in Music and Musical Scholarship: A Perspective from Ethnomusicology
Journal Article Crossing Boundaries in Music and Musical Scholarship: A Perspective from Ethnomusicology Get access Kay Kaufman Shelemay Kay Kaufman Shelemay Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Musical Quarterly, Volume 80, Issue 1, Spring 1996, Pages 13–30, https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/80.1.13 Published: 01 March 1996
The Ethnomusicologist and the Transmission of Tradition
Research Article| January 01 1996 The Ethnomusicologist and the Transmission of Tradition Kay Kaufman Shelemay Kay Kaufman Shelemay Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Musicology (1996) 14 (1): 35-51. https://doi.org/10.2307/763956 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permi…
Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews
Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews
When Jews left Aleppo, Syria, in the early-20th century and established communities abroad, they carried with them a repertory of songs (pizmonim) with sacred Hebrew texts set to melodies borrrowed from the popular Middle Eastern Arab musical tradition. This text tells the story of the pizmonim as they have continued to be composed, performed and transformed through the present day; it is thus an ethnography of an important Judeo-Arabic musical t…
Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant
Art (30 works) · History (24 works) · Diverse Musicological Studies (22 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Anthropology (15 works) · Music History and Culture (14 works) · African history and culture analysis (13 works) · History (13 works) · Literature (10 works) · Musical (10 works)