Search - Various Artists :: Out of Babylon: The Music of Baghdadi-Jewish Migrations Into Asia and Beyond

In principle the music on this CD belongs to the ancient tradition of Bagdhadi-Jewish music. In fact it documents songs performed (i) in the synagogues of the Baghdadi-Jewish diaspora in Asia from the end of the 18th to the mid-20th centuries, and (ii) in a further diaspora since the 1950s to Australia, the UK, and beyond. The songs were recorded in Bombay, Poona, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Manchester, London and Sydney by ethnomusicologists Margaret Kartomi and Sara Manasseh of Melbourne and London respectively as part of the CD project team which also included Regina Randhofer of Halle, Germany and Bronia Kornhauser of Melbourne. Randhofer's interest in psalmody led her to the National Sound Archives in Jerusalem. From there she selected a number of valuable historical recordings, originally collected in Iraq and Israel, to provide more comparative material for the CD. Kornhauser has been the research archivist for the Australian Archive of Jewish Music (in the School of Music, Monash University) since its inception in 1995 and has been collaborating with Kartomi for a number of years in researching the Jewish music of the Asia-Pacific region. The CD is one of the outcomes of that research. Although the recordings that it contains have a documentary character, they have been carefully prepared to maximise their audio-technical qualities.