We received news from Maureen Jackson (Ph.D. 2008) of her new book "Mixing Musics: Turkish Jewry and the Urban Landscape of a Sacred Song." The book traces the mixing of musical forms and practices in Istanbul to illuminate multiethnic music-making and its transformations across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It focuses on the Jewish religious repertoire known as the Maftirim, which developed in parallel with "secular" Ottoman court music. Through memoirs, personal interviews, and new archival sources, the book explores areas often left out of those histories of the region that focus primarily on Jewish communities in isolation, political events and actors, or nationalizing narratives.
More information available at: http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20964
Maureen was most recently a Harry Starr Fellow at Harvard University.