City of Song: Music and the Making of Modern Jerusalem

The Jewish Music Forum and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are proud to present a presentation by Dr. Michael A. Figueroa, author of the acclaimed book, City of Song: Music and the Making of Modern Jerusalem (Oxford University Press, 2022).

In this presentation, Dr. Figueroa will present on an important aspect of his research, titled: "'The iron skeleton is silent like my comrade': Israeli Songs as War Memorials"

This lecture concerns commemorative song and commemorative landscape in Jerusalem, discussing how music and monuments work in tandem to narrate past violence from the early statehood period (c. 1948–1967). Through an analysis of the career of musical renditions of Haim Gouri’s “Bab El Wad” (1949) and Yoram Taharlev’s “Ammunition Hill” (1968), we will explore the poetics of bereavement and its emplacement within the city of Jerusalem. The exposition will include covers and parodies of memorial repertory that illuminate how bereavement has emerged in the twenty-first century as a site of political debate.

Michael A. Figueroa is Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He researches music and politics in the SWANA region (South West Asia and North Africa) and its diasporas. The first phase of his career has focused on music in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, culminating in his first book, City of Song: Music and the Making of Modern Jerusalem (Oxford University Press, 2022). He has published in several journals, including Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, Journal of Music History Pedagogy, Journal of Musicology, and multiple edited volumes, for three of which he served as an editor. He recently has embarked on a second major project, “Music and Racial Awakening in Arab America,” a study of post-9/11 Arab American race consciousness through an expansive study of musical life across genres and geographical boundaries. Prof. Figueroa is a past Associate Director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at UNC.