The Judeo-Spanish Cancionero as a Technology of Transmission

Abstract

This special issue of Yod brings together, for the first time and in a historic way, the work of many leading international scholars on Judeo-Spanish songbooks — auditory and oral documents preserved in written form. Some contributors have played key roles in collecting and archiving ephemeral materials and informants’ memories (notably Shoshana Weich Shahak and Judith Cohen); others have produced critical editions of songbooks based on existing written and recorded sources (Paloma Díaz-Mas, Rivka Havassy, Hilary Pomeroy, and Edwin Seroussi). Still others, who have previously focused on the cultural aspects of Sephardic musical orality, have explored its relationship to written expression (Pamela Dorn and Renato Kamhi). Finally, a linguist and an anthropologist — both of whom have studied the historical and cultural legacies of the Expulsion and the Inquisition — demonstrate how these histories are intertwined with the specificities of orality/aurality and transmission throughout historical and contemporary periods (David Bunis, Seth Kunin).