“An umbrella made of precious gems”: An Examination of Memory and Diasporic Identities in Kerala Jewish Songs and Literature
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Oh, Lovely Parrot (2004) is a compilation of 43 typical Kerala "parrot songs" translated from Malayalam into English by Scaria Zacharia and Barbara C. Johnson as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
The Jews living in the state of Kerala enact their diasporic identities through a unique narrative network including songs, stories, and memoirs. Drawing on memory studies and affect theory, this article aims to examine selected Jewish folk songs as an example of entanglement of memory and culture, nostalgia and narrative. We study Oh, Lovely Parrot (2004), which is a compilation of 43 typical Kerala “parrot songs” – devotional hymns and songs for special occasions – translated from Malayalam into English by Scaria Zacharia and Barbara C. Johnson. Performances of these songs constitute cultural as well as affective phenomena that bring together Jewish identities, especially female rituals, in a collective effort to preserve their ethnic memory and its associated social identity. The music unique to this community illustrates the ancestry and tradition of the Kerala Jews which held them together even after ‘aliyah’ (a Hebrew word referring to the migration to the nation state of Israel post-1948). Using selected songs from the book, the article aims to examine the community's cultural identity markers related to experiential and discursive diasporic memory. It also draws on the memoir Ruby of Cochin: An Indian Jewish Woman Remembers (2001) by Ruby Daniel and Barbara C. Johnson to analyse the affective quality of songs which unites the community in collective imagination and in complex nostalgia narratives.read more
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Jewish culture and Jewish memory
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Oh, lovely parrot! : Jewish women's songs from Kerala
Barbara C. Johnson,Skar̲iyā Sakkar̲iya,Universiṭah ha-ʻIvrit bi-Yerushalayim. Merkaz le-ḥeḳer ha-musiḳah ha-Yehudit +2 more
References
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TL;DR: This work is the first unequivocal demonstration that naturalistic memories evoking by odors are more emotional than memories evoked by other cues.
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Book Reviews: Biographical Research, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives
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