Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology), 1998. xvi, 291 pp., notes, glossary, references, table, figures, bibliography, index, musical examples, photographs, compact disc.

Extract

Due to the Israeli-Arab conflict that spans the twentieth century, Jewish and Arabic cultures are generally perceived as being in collision. However, since the inception of Islam in the sixth century and at least until the fifteenth century, the vast majority of the Jewish people dwelled in the Arab—and later on Ottoman—Empires. This close physical contact led, in spite of religious differences, to diverse types of cultural syntheses, such as the various Judeo-Arabic languages and literatures. It appears that music is one of the fields in which Jews and Arabs achieved their closest exchanges. The book by Kaufman Shelemay is a glaring document of this symbiosis.