"Worlds of Judeo-Spanish Songs" with Judith Cohen

Join us for an IIJS presentation with Judith Cohen titled “Entre la mar y la arena - Between the Sea and the Sand – Worlds of Judeo-Spanish Songs” on Tuesday, March 25, at noon in person at 617 Kent Hall.

An old Sephardic wedding song evokes the elusive liminal space “between the sea and the sand.” In the close to half-century Judith Cohen has been working with Judeo-Spanish/Ladino/Haketía songs as both an ethnomusicologist and a singer, they have gone from being very little known outside small circles to being a world – or, now, global – music commodity. In this short presentation, Judith offers a glimpse of the older worlds of the songs and their largely lost life contexts. We’ll explore wedding songs, where the bride is “between the sea and the sand,” narrative ballads whose words bridge centuries and whose tunes bridge continents, songs whose contrafactum tunes bridge the sacred and the profane, and others, in Sephardic cultures from Morocco, former Ottoman lands, and some of their secondary diasporas.

Judith Cohen is a Canadian ethnomusicologist, singer, storyteller, and inveterate traveller. Known internationally for her research on and traditional performances of Sephardic songs, she also works with Crypto-Jewish practices in Portugal and Brazil, medieval music and music traditions of the Sephardic diaspora in Morocco, former Ottoman lands, and their widespread diasporas. Dr. Cohen is also the editor and consultant for the Alan Lomax Spain-1952 collection. She recently returned from several weeks in Brazil, conducting fieldwork and giving concerts and talks. She teaches part-time at York University in Toronto, and, several decades ago was the secretary of Columbia’s East Asian Institute on the same floor and in the same building that IIJS occupies today.  
www.judithcohen.ca

This event was made possible by the generosity of Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University, 617 Kent Hall, New York, United States