Date limite pour envoyer une proposition de communication : 22 décembre 2023
Yallah: Conference on Judeo-Arabic Music
Presented by the Jewish Music Institute
Co-convenors:
Dr. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz (Cambridge/INALCO) and Dr. Ilana Webster-Kogen (SOAS)
February 11, 2024
SOAS University of London
Call for Papers Yallah 2024
Joy & Sorrow in Judeo-Arabic Music and Ritual
Music marks opposing emotional expressions of joy and sorrow in ritual celebrations. In Jewish life, rituals embody symbolic action and engender a processual flow (Turner 1967:149–50), sometimes invoking joy and sorrow within the same text, melody, rhythm or timbre. During moments of pain and sorrow, ritual communities equally rely on performers and practitioners to guide communities through feelings of catharsis, enlightenment, joy and exhilaration.
The 2024 Yallah conference invites 20-minute papers on music of joy and sorrow from the varied diasporas of Arabic-speaking Jews. Repertoires can include vernacular, paraliturgical and liturgical repertoires. We invite multi-disciplinary approaches to this discussion from ethnomusicology and sound studies to comparative literature, history, religious studies, anthropology, gender studies and others.
Please send an abstract of no more than 200 words to Ilana Webster-Kogen (iw4@soas.ac.uk) by December 22nd.