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The 2026 NYU/AMS Lecture, “Unsettled Sounds: The Critical Frame of Arab-Jewish Musical Inheritance,” will be held on Friday, 24 April 2026 at 4:30 p.m. EDT at New York University. Attendance is free, but registration is required.
This lecture will be presented by Tamar Sella (University of North Texas).
Abstract
This talk investigates questions of the political meanings of Arab-Jewish musical inheritance in the wake of its dislocations. How might we read the possibilities of reparative work of Arab-Jewish musical production amid its manipulations and deployments by reactionary forces? How might we go beyond narratives of cultural revival that rehearse Zionist logics offering historical redemption through entry into the Israeli state’s timeline? This talk looks closely at the work of Mizrahi musicians, performers, and cultural workers across generations who engage with their Arab-Jewish cultural inheritance. It considers their works as sites for not only reconstituting elements of the past but also for negotiating the unsettled processes that have sought to transform and conscript Arab-Jews within the settler colonial project in Palestine, and for inhabiting the non-totalizing effect of this transformation.
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