Stranger in a Strange Land: Developing a Black Jewish Aesthetic

Pearl and Jack Mandel Lecture in Jewish Studies

Anthony Russell (Vocalist and Composer)

"Stranger in a Strange Land: Developing a Black Jewish Aesthetic"

Despite the wealth of rhetoric built on historical, narrative and expressive affinities between Blackness and Jewishness, the dynamic artistic potential of a singular aesthetic informed by these affinities remains to be established by creators who claim Blackness and Jewishness among their identities. In this lecture, performer, composer and writer Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell explores the content, challenges and approaches of this artistic potential in his own work and the work of his creative contemporaries.

This event is co-sponsored by the Faculty of Music.

For the past ten years Anthony Russell has been a vocalist, composer and arranger specializing in music in the Yiddish language. Anthony's work with klezmer trio Veretski Pass resulted in Convergence, an exploration of a century of African American and Ashkenazi Jewish music. His recent release on the Borscht Beat label with accordionist and keyboardist Dmitri Gaskin, Kosmopolitn, features their original settings of Yiddish modernist poetry for voice and string ensemble. Anthony has also been a culture essayist in a number of publications, including The Forward, Tablet Magazine, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, PROTOCOLS, Full Stop Magazine, Ayin Press and Jewish Currents.

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This lecture will be delivered in-person at JHB100 and virtually via Zoom.

Sponsors

    Faculty of Music; Pearl and Jack Mandel Lecture in Jewish Studies