A lecture by Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Depts. of Music and of African and African American Studies (Harvard University)

Thursday, February 11, 2016
4:00 PM
Faculty Center
UCLA

Shelemay’s presentation will provide an overview of the Ethiopian Jewish tradition based on the only musical study of their liturgy and its musical content before their departure from Ethiopia.
This presentation will provide an overview of the Ethiopian Jewish tradition based on the only musical study of their liturgy and its musical content before their departure from Ethiopia. Here song revealed unexpected insights into both the Ethiopian Jewish past and the processes through which Ethiopian Jews became part of the broader Jewish world.

Kay Kaufman Shelemay is Gordon Watts Professor of Music and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.  A Fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, she is a Past President of the Society for Ethnomusicology. She has received fellowships from numerous institutions, including the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Shelemay’s research interests include musical ethnography, music and memory, and Ethiopian music and musicians in their North American diaspora. She is the author of nine books and editions, including Music, Ritual, and Falasha History, which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and the Prize of the International Musicological Society. An outstanding teacher, Shelemay received an Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Columbia University School of General Studies in 1982, the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize at Harvard in 2006, and, in 2014, the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award at Harvard. In 2014, Shelemay was elected an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences.

To register email cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu or call (310) 267-5327

Cost : While the event is free and open to the public, pre-registration is required.

http://www.cjs.ucla.edu/

Sponsor(s): African Studies Center, Center for Near Eastern Studies, Ethnomusicology, Center for the Study of Religion, Sponsored by the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. Funding provided by the Natalie Limonick Endowment in Jewish Civilization, and the Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music at UCLA.