Tadias Magazine

Source: Harvard

“Capturing a Moment in Time”
A presentation by Kay Kaufman Shelemay (pictured above).

Kay Kaufman Shelemay is a professor of music and African and African American Studies at Harvard. She is author of A Song of Longing: An Ethiopian Journey (University of Illinois Press, 1991).

In “Capturing a Moment in Time,” Kay Kaufman Shelemay will use images and recordings to introduce Ethiopian musical styles and the musicians behind them.

Religion, culture, and history intertwine in Ethiopia, which was a Christian empire from the fourth century until 1974. Since 1974, an extraordinary number of Ethiopian musicians have migrated to the United States, bringing with them an array of musical styles.

During her 2007-2008 fellowship year at Radcliffe, Shelemay explored musical performance as a creative process through which the Ethiopian immigrant community negotiates ethnic, religious, and social boundaries. Her presentation will draw on this research, which has become the foundation of a new collection established in the Library of Congress.

Shelemay, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She is a past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology and a former chair of the board of trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Date: Nov 20, 2008
Time: 6:30PM ET
Location: Thursday, November 20, 2008
6:30 PM
Harvard Club of New York City
Cambridge Room
27 West 44th Street
New York, New York