G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music
Music Building, Room 6
617-495-2791
Office Hours:
Tuesday, 2:15pm - 3:45pm
Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Professor
of Music, received her B.M., M.A., and Ph.D. in Musicology from the University
of Michigan. She is a past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology
and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She traveled and conducted
research in Ethiopia and Israel during graduate school, and wrote her
dissertation on the liturgical music of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews).
A Monograph of her work: Music, Ritual and Falasha History, earned her
the 1986 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, and the 1988 Prize of the International
Musicological Society.
Professor Shelemay teaches the Core Course Soundscapes, and the Music proseminars in ethnomusicology. She also teaches the graduate-level Music courses in ethnomusicology.
Music
206r. Research Methods in Ethnomusicology: Seminar
Catalog Number: 6891
[Music
208r. Ethnomusicology: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 2232
In 1991, Professor Shelemay published A Song of Longing: an Ethiopian Journey, about her experiences in Ethiopia. More recently she has co-edited a three-volume study, with Peter Jeffrey, entitled Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant, that traces Ethiopian Christian liturgy from oral sources back to the earliest notated manuscripts.
Shelemay investigates the musical
traditions of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, Mexico City, and Israel in her
1998 book, Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance Among Syrian
Jews. Her textbook, Soundscapes: Exploring Music in a Changing
World was published by W.W.Norton in 2001.
Prof. Shelemay's profile at the Music department