Shared Soundscapes of Ottoman Era Safed: A Musical Microhistory

Abstract Self-recorded repertoires, much like historical memoirs, may serve as musical microhistories, bringing new perspectives to everyday life and challenging dominant historical accounts. The recordings of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Margolis Abulafia, a Palestinian Jew, document his personal repertory of songs and testify to the interconnectivity of musical communities in late Ottoman Palestine, a period for which the musical landscape remains largely unexplored. Recorded in New York in the 1950s with the help of ethnomusicologist Harry Smith, Rabbi Abulafia's repertoire included Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Arab music, including songs with Arabic lyrics and melodies from shared Jewish-Arab celebrations like those in Meron on Lag BaOmer. These recordings provide a rare glimpse into the interfaith and interethnic musical exchange in late Ottoman Safed and exemplify how music in late Ottoman Palestine transcended ethnic and religious boundaries. Given the complex geopolitical circumstances of Ottoman Palestine, this self-recorded repertory of an unusual individual, which was never released to the public, challenges accepted categories within Jewish communities and conventional notions regarding the relationships between ethnic and religious groups in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The musical documentation of an individual, especially one viewed as atypical of their ethnic or religious group, calls upon us to reevaluate many of our assumptions including those about the connectivity of various ethnic and religious groups. This reenforces the significance of exploring the musical activities of the individual and considering their musical microhistories for an understanding of culture in all its facets.