North Africa’s Jewish Musical Past, with Chris Silver

Lecture #44 in Joshua Horowitz’s series, The Promiscuous World of Jewish Music

North Africa’s Jewish Musical Past: A History in Records, presented by Chris Silver

Monday, April 19, 11am Pacific Daylight Time/2pm New York/ 7pm London/ 8pm Paris/ 9pm Tel Aviv. Please confirm the local time !

Length: 1 – 2 hours

Donations to Josh Horowitz are accepted and appreciated, but not required.

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Password: 156230

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For much of the twentieth century, North African Jews played an outsized role as both music-makers and purveyors of music across the Maghrib. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, all under French rule until the middle of the last century, Jewish vocalists, instrumentalists, and sonic impresarios utilized the phonograph to record and rescue the classical Andalusian tradition while simultaneously pioneering popular musical forms mixed in style and language. Those efforts engendered fervent responses from a range of Jews and Muslims, and so too, from French authorities apprehensive about the increasingly unfettered flow of recorded music that stirred passions so. Drawing on rare shellac records from his personal archive, historian Christopher Silver will provide a musical tour of the North African Jewish past through its sounds. Images courtesy of Christopher Silver, design by Emily Burack.

About Joshua Horowitz»

This project has been made possible in part by a grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, in partnership with the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Grants for the Arts, and The California Endowment.