My own personal version of paradise (a very musical one) is located in Jerusalem. It’s called National Sound Archives (NSA). These were founded in 1964 by Israel Adler (Berlin 1925-Jerusalem 2009), my beloved teacher and a veritable powerhouse. Israel Adler—who was also the founding director of The Jewish Music Research Center of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (currently directed by Edwin Seroussi, our guest last week)—was into synergies, and thought that scholars and archivists should work hand-in-hand.
The result is a fantabulous collection of hundreds of thousands of recordings, documenting music in Israel (including traditional music of many religious groups as well as the sound archives of the State of Israel), and Jewish music from around the world.
A peculiarity of the NSA is that many of the researchers who have conducted their work there have left their notes to accompany the field recordings they either made or studied. The result is that (if one knows how to ask), scholars working in this institutions not only have access to amazing musical treasures from around the world. They also have access to the scholarship of those who preceded them. Talk about collaborative projects. And talk about standing on the shoulders of giants…
The current director of the NSA is dr. Gila Flam. She has spearheaded a massive process of digitization, which accessible via the recently opened Music Center of the National Library of Israel (it used to be called The Jewish National and University Library, or JNUL, and was founded before the founding of the State of Israel itself).
In the video below, dr. Flam addresses the scope of her project (the style of the video is a bit too formal for my own taste, and not entirely in line with my own experience with the reality of this institution over the last several decades as a vibrant and somewhat unconventional place). We also get to see the Givat Ram (or Safra) Campus of The Hebrew University, its Library, and snippets of the amazing music performances organized under dr. Flam’s guidance. All good stuff.
This week, we will use a compilation of recordings from the NSA as a way to explore the diversity of traditional sounds found, collected and preserved in Israel by its leading sound archive. The compilation, Musical Traditions in Israel: Treasures of the National Sound Archives, has recently become available online, and you can listen to 24 different sound examples here. Unfortunately, most of the metadata for this playlist is in Hebrew, BUT you can find a copy of the booklet that accompanied the original CD release on bCourses.
In order to guide you in your listening work, and in preparing your first weekly written response, please refer to this week’s handout (and to the syllabus for my guidelines in completing this assignment):
Music in Israel 