Author Talk with Jeremiah Lockwood: Golden Ages: Hasidic Singers and Cantorial Revival in the Digital Era

A talk with scholar and musician Jeremiah Lockwood to discuss his book

Author Talk with Jeremiah Lockwood: Golden Ages: Hasidic Singers and Cantorial Revival in the Digital Era

Wednesday, February 21, 2024
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Music Library

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Co-sponsored by the Center for European and Russian Studies, the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience invite you to an author talk with Jeremiah Lockwood to discuss his book Golden Ages: Hasidic Singers and Cantorial Revival in the Digital Era (UC Press) on February 21, 2024 from 1:00 pm-2:30 pm. This event is open to the public with no RSVP required.

Abstract

Golden Ages: Hasidic Singers and Cantorial Revival in the Digital Era is an ethnographic study of young singers in the contemporary Brooklyn Hasidic community who base their aesthetic explorations of the culturally intimate space of prayer on the gramophone-era cantorial golden age. Jeremiah Lockwood proposes a view of their work as a nonconforming social practice that calls upon the sounds and structures of Jewish sacred musical heritage to disrupt the aesthetics and power hierarchies of their conservative community, defying institutional authority and pushing at normative boundaries of sacred and secular. Beyond its role as a desirable art form, golden age cantorial music offers aspiring Hasidic singers a form of Jewish cultural productivity in which artistic excellence, maverick outsider status and sacred authority are aligned. A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Learn more at University of California Press

About the Speaker 

Jeremiah Lockwood is a scholar and musician, working in the fields of Jewish studies, performance studies and ethnomusicology. He is currently a Fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Both his music performance and scholarship gravitate toward the Jewish liturgical music and Yiddish expressive culture of the early twentieth century, and the reverberations of this cultural moment in present day communities. Lockwood’s research considers the work of cantors as arbiters of social, intellectual and aesthetic change in times of crisis and cultural transformation. Jeremiah received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2021. Jeremiah was a 2022–23 Yale Institute of Sacred Music Fellow, where he conducted research on the khaznte phenomenon of gramophone-era women performers of cantorial music and composed a new piece of music responding to this fecund moment in Jewish musical history. Jeremiah has recorded more than a dozen albums over a music career that spans decades with his band The Sway Machinery and other projects.

Venue

Music Library
1102 Schoenberg Music Building
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1490

Parking

Parking at UCLA requires a valid permit at all times. Campus parking is available 24-hours a day at varying prices. Parking Structure 2 is closest to the event venue. Visit UCLA Visitor Parking for information about where to park and how to pay.


Sponsor(s): Center for European and Russian Studies, Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience, UCLA Music Library