Associate conductor James K. Bass interviews scholar Judah M. Cohen about the music on Seraphic Fire's November 2024 concert, "Contemporary: Jewish Voices."
Judah M. Cohen is associate dean for faculty affairs, research, and creative activity, and professor of musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, as well as the Lou and Sybil Mervis Professor of Jewish Culture in the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program in the College. His research interests include music in Jewish life, American music, musical theater, popular culture, Caribbean Jewish history, diaspora, and medical ethnomusicology. His training as a musicologist and an anthropologist, and his professional activity within Jewish studies have allowed him to explore many aspects of Jewish culture and history. Over the course of four books and over 50 articles, Cohen has explored the idea of Jewish cultural expression as a dynamic and ever-changing process, created and recreated over time by artists, religious leaders, philosophers, and activists. He has aimed to understand this idea largely through the prism of sound and its relationship to ideas of Jewish identity.
Credits:
Host: James K. Bass
Guest: Judah M. Cohen
Producer: Alexis Aimé