Statement of Significance
Project History
Audience and Dissemination Plan
Key Personnel

Statement of Significance

"In an era when every continent seems convulsed by ethnic, religious, and racial violence, examples of cross-national and multi-racial music offer hope for a better future…these cultural creations also testify to the ways in which artists from aggrieved communities can use the very instruments of their displacement and dispossession to forge a new public sphere with emancipatory potential."
- George Lipsitz, Cultural Crossroads (Verso: 1994)

The project is the result of my love for reggae music, which now is probably as much a self-identifying aspect of my life and personality as are my deep-seated Jewish roots. I recall seeing the Star of David and hearing the word "Zion" at some of my earliest reggae concerts, images and words that to me always spoke directly of the Jewish experience…images and words from Yeshiva. The more I learned about reggae (and its source, Rastafari) the more I wanted to understand why or how it was connected to the symbols I had previously prescribed as simply being Jewish. This curiosity invariably led me to more questions, and then, unexpectedly, to even more connections.

All the way back to the alleged sultry affair between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, a certain blend of Jewish flavor has crept into the spiritual history of Ethiopia, turning up subtly in Rastafarian lifestyle, and then inevitably in reggae. Consider that one of the first reggae songs ever broadcast on the radio was called "Israelites"; or that religious Rastas and orthodox Jews share fundamental views towards dietary and sexual ethics-not to mention, how they both embrace the notion of repatriation. In Awake Zion, I use reggae music to explore a strand of multiculturalism that exists as a reality of the Jewish and African Diasporas, to not only reinforce ideas about inclusiveness and harmony within their own contemporary mixed urban realities, but also as a message to multicultural communities worldwide.

Because the project began as my thesis for a master's degree in cultural journalism (NYU), its foundations are intensely research-driven, all prompted by a thorough investigation of the origins and practice of Rastafarianism vis-à-vis Judaism. Old Testament scripture, the Psalms, and other liturgy were the first tools I used to look at this idea of shared mythologies, which I observe in the context of reggae lyrics, album covers and Rasta rhetoric. From an artistic perspective, I chose to relay the researched material through the lens of my own experience with the music, and my ongoing encounter with what I can now safely call a distinct Jewish-reggae musical subculture began to texture the journey with real slice-of-life examples of how these roots continue to tangle today. Scholars and experts from immediate and surrounding fields add informed insights and credibility to the study. Among them: Dr. Gage Averill, Chair of the music department at NYU, ethnomusicologist, and my advisor on the project; Roger Steffens, Los-Angeles based reggae historian and archivist; and Dr. Malka Shabtay, an Israeli anthropologist who has written extensively about music, identity and Ethiopian Jewry.

What began as a formalist genre study of Rasta culture and its Hebraic roots, soon began to include a look at the modern-day cultural world of Jewish reggae, a journey culminates with my own pilgrimage to Israel, where Ethiopian Jews reside, where a small, sizzling reggae scene thrives, and where I explore its role as a healing agent in such a war-torn reality-and then of course to Jamaica, where reggae and Rasta were born.