2019 Winner of Society of Ethnomusicology's Special Interest Group Award for Jewish Music In the thirty years since their immigration from Ethiopia to the State of Israel, Ethiopian-Israelis have put music at the center of communal and public life, using it alternatingly as a mechanism of protest and as appeal for integration. Ethiopian music develops in quiet corners of urban Israel as the most prominent advocate for equality, and the Israeli-born generation is creating new musical styles that negotiate the terms of blackness outside of Africa. For the first time, this book examines in detail those new genres of Ethiopian-Israeli music, including Ethiopian-Israeli hip-hop, Ethio-soul performed across Europe, and eskesta dance projects at the center of national festivals. This book argues that in a climate where Ethiopian-Israelis fight for recognition of their contribution to society, musical style often takes the place of political speech, and musicians take on outsize roles as cultural critics. From their perch in Tel Aviv, Ethiopian-Israeli musicians use musical style to critique a social hierarchy that affects life for everyone in Israel/Palestine.

Music and arts initiatives are often praised for their capacity to aid in the rehabilitation of refugees. However, it is crucial to recognize that this celebratory view can also mask the unequal power dynamics involved in regulating forced migration. In Composing Aid, Oliver Shao turns a critical ear towards the United Nations-run Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, one of the largest and oldest encampments in the world. This politically engaged ethnography delves into various cultural practices, including hip hop shows, traditional dances, religious ceremonies, and NGO events, in an urbanized borderland area beset with precarity and inequality. How do songs intersect with the politics of belonging in a space controlled by state and humanitarian forces? Why do camp authorities support certain musical activities over others? What can performing artists teach us about the inequities of the international refugee regime? Offering a provocative contribution to ethnomusicological methods through its focus on activist research, Composing Aid elucidates the powerful role of music and the arts in reproducing, contesting, and reimagining the existing migratory order.

Meat Matters offers a portrait of the lives of Ethiopian Jews as it is reflected and refracted thought the symbolism of meat. Drawing upon thirty years of fieldwork, this beautifully written and innovatively constructed ethnography tells the story of the Beta Israel, who began immigrating from Ethiopia to Israel in the 1970s. Once in Israel, their world changed in formerly unimaginable ways, such as conversion under Rabbinic restrictions, moving into multistory buildings, different attitudes toward gender and reproduction, and perhaps above all, the newly acquired distinctiveness of the color of their bodies. In the face of such changes, the Beta Israel held on to a key idiom in their lives: meat. The community continues to be organized into kirchas, groups of friends and family who purchase and raise cows, then butcher and divide the animal's body into small and equal chunks, which are distributed among the kircha through a lottery ritual. Flowing back and forth between Ethiopia to Israel, Meat Matters follows the many strands of significance surrounding cows and meat, ultimately forming a vibrant web of meaning at the heart of the Beta Israel community today.

A comprehensive historical, geographic, and thematic analysis of the multidimensional and dynamic migration experience of Ethiopians within and beyond Africa. Ethiopia is one of the largest African sources of transnational migrants, with an estimated two to three million Ethiopians living outside of the home country. This edited collection provides a critical examination of the temporal, spatial, and thematic dimensions of Ethiopian migration, mapping out its scale, scope, and destinations. The thirteen essays here (plus an introduction and conclusion by the volume's editors) offer a discussion of the state of knowledge and current debates on the diaspora and suggest alternative frameworks for interrogating and understanding the Ethiopian migration and diasporic experiences. Key time periods and literatures are identified to study Ethiopian transnational migration, moving from a survey of patterns in pre-twentieth century Ethiopia and on to changing trajectories in the imperial period and under succeeding postrevolutionary regimes. Geographically, the contour of the Ethiopian diaspora is outlined, identifying key destinations and patterns of return. In particular, the volume seeks to correct the traditional tendency to conflate the Ethiopian diaspora with North America and Europe by including areas that have long been marginalized, such as inter-Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The objective is not to construct a simple cartography of migration but a critical analysis of national and global issues, policies, trends, and processes that shape the roots and routes of the migration dynamic. Thematically, this book aims to challenge the existing boundaries of Ethiopian migration and diaspora studies and raise important concerns about representation, ghettoization, and perpetuation of inequalities. Edited by Shimelis Bonsa Gulema, Hewan Girma, and Mulugeta F. Dinbabo. Contributors: Alpha Abebe; Amsale Alemu; Tekalign Ayalew; Kassaye Berhanu-MacDonald; Elizabeth Chacko; Marina de Re> Mulugeta F. Dinbabo; Peter H. Gebre; Hewan Girma; Mary Goitom; Shimelis Bonsa Gulema; Tesfaye Semela; Nassise Solomon; and Fitsum R. Tedla.

Directly addressing the underrepresentation of Black composers in core music curricula, Expanding the Canon: Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom aims to both demonstrate why diversification is badly needed and help faculty expand their teaching with practical, classroom-oriented lesson plans that focus on teaching music theory with music by Black composers. This collection of 21 chapters is loosely arranged to resemble a typical music theory curriculum, with topics progressing from basic to advanced and moving from fundamentals, diatonic harmony, and chromatic harmony to form, popular music, and music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some chapters focus on segments of the traditional music theory sequence, while others consider a single style or composer. Contributors address both methods to incorporate the music of Black composers into familiar topics, and ways to rethink and expand the purview of the music theory curriculum. A foreword by Philip Ewell and an introductory narrative by Teresa L. Reed describing her experiences as an African American student of music set the volume in wider context. Incorporating a wide range of examples by composers across classical, jazz, and popular genres, this book helps bring the rich and varied body of music by Black composers into the core of music theory pedagogy and offers a vital resource for all faculty teaching music theory and analysis.

Foundational Considerations -- Dance/Movement-based Arts -- Media & Technology -- Music -- Poetry/Storytelling -- Theater -- Visual Arts

An examination of popular Ethiopian music styles in Tel Aviv 2019 Winner of Society of Ethnomusicology's Special Interest Group Award for Jewish Music In the thirty years since their immigration from Ethiopia to the State of Israel, Ethiopian-Israelis have put music at the center of communal and public life, using it alternatingly as a mechanism of protest and as appeal for integration. Ethiopian music develops in quiet corners of urban Israel as the most prominent advocate for equality, and the Israeli-born generation is creating new musical styles that negotiate the terms of blackness outside of Africa. For the first time, this book examines in detail those new genres of Ethiopian-Israeli music, including Ethiopian-Israeli hip-hop, Ethio-soul performed across Europe, and eskesta dance projects at the center of national festivals. This book argues that in a climate where Ethiopian-Israelis fight for recognition of their contribution to society, musical style often takes the place of political speech, and musicians take on outsize roles as cultural critics. From their perch in Tel Aviv, Ethiopian-Israeli musicians use musical style to critique a social hierarchy that affects life for everyone in Israel/Palestine.

This is a personal account of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, fought between May 1998 and June 2000, as well as of the periods immediately preceding and following the conflict. Shallow Graves traces shifting local perceptions of time, the nation and the region, beginning in the mid-1990s and concluding with the peace agreement signed between the two governments in 2018. Richard Reid is a historian who was based in Eritrea during the war, and who continued to visit both that country and Ethiopia for several years afterwards. This personal perspective offers a more vivid, intimate portrait of the experience of the war than can normally be offered by putatively "objective" academic accounts. As well as providing first-hand reportage and analysis, Reid problematises the role of the historian--and specifically the foreign historian--as the supposedly impartial observer of events. His eloquent narrative, constructed around conversations and interactions with a range of local witnesses, friends and colleagues, explores the impact of prolonged war and its aftermath--both on private and public memory, and on the nature of history itself.

Music of the bars and clubs of Austin, Texas has long been recognized as defining one of a dozen or more musical "scenes" across the country. In Dissonant Identities, Barry Shank, himself a musician who played and lived in the Texas capital, studies the history of its popular music, its cultural and economic context, and also the broader ramifications of that music as a signifying practice capable of transforming identities. While his focus is primarily on progressive country and rock, Shank also writes about traditional country, blues, rock, disco, ethnic, and folk musics. Using empirical detail and an expansive theoretical framework, he shows how Austin became the site for "a productive contestation between two forces: the fierce desire to remake oneself through musical practice, and the equally powerful struggle to affirm the value of that practice in the complexly structured late-capitalist marketplace."