The HU U.S. Alumni Association presents:
Torch Talks:
Israeli Music and The Orient: A Very Short History
Dr. Oded Erez studies popular music and film music, drawing on methodologies from historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and cultural studies. His research often focuses on the interplay of aesthetics and politics in the music of Israel/Palestine and the Mediterranean, with an emphasis on the musical negotiation of ethnicities. His published work deals with topics such as popular music taste cultures among Salonica Jews, the Arabic language in contemporary Jewish Israeli pop, and the politics of music education in Israel’s Arab schools’ system during the Mapai era. He is currently completing a book manuscript under the working title Practical Mediterraneanism: Popular Music and Ethnicity in Israel/Palestine. He also leads the research project Mixing Rituals: an Ethnography of Israeli wedding DJs and their audiences, funded by the Israeli Science Foundation (2020-2023). He received his Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and conducted his postdoctoral studies at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows. Before coming to HU, Dr. Erez was a Lecturer in the Dept. of Music at Bar-Ilan University (2018-2022).