Judith Cohen in conversation with Jessica Roda

Ethnomusicologists Judith Cohen and Jessica Roda first met in Paris many years ago, through their mutual interest in Judeo-Spanish songs. They continue to work with complementary perspectives on this tradition and its transformations in community and public-facing contexts, and on other projects as well. Their conversation will range over their geographical and metaphorical travels, Jessica’s work with Ashkenazi women, orthodoxy and media; and Judith’s work with Portuguese Crypto-Jews, Alan Lomax’s Spanish recordings and combining scholarship on medieval and traditional music with performance. Montreal is also a common point, for Judith her birthplace and for Jessica another adopted home – its complex, multilingual musical worlds are often part of their conversations – over espresso or Moroccan mint tea and now over COZ.

Judith Cohen is an ethnomusicologist, medievalist, singer, instrumentalist and storyteller. A longtime specialist in Sephardic music, music among the Portuguese Crypto-Jews and related traditions, she often combines scholarship and performance. She holds a doctorate in ethnomusicology and a master’s in medieval studies from the Université de Montréal, and is an associated researcher at Canadian, Israeli and Portuguese universities. Judith is also the consultant and general editor of the Alan Lomax Spain 1952 collection, and was the first Alan Lomax Fellow at the Library of Congress. She teaches part-time at York University, Toronto, and occasionally for the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal cantorial programme. The author of many scholarly articles and book chapters, Judith has carried out years of fieldwork on Sephardic music in Europe, Morocco, Israel and North America; and on village singing and women’s hand drumming in Spain, Portugal and French Canada. As a performer and workshop leader, she sings in medieval Romance languages, as well as Ladino, languages of Spain and Portugal, Slavic languages, French and Yiddish, and plays various string, wind and hand percussion instruments. Judith often combines performance of these traditions with pan-European balladry and storytelling, as a regular host and teller in Canadian storytelling associations. Among her favourite pandemic-zoom gigs was representing the Cervantes Institute of Tangier, Morocco to perform Ladino, Valencian and Ibizan songs in a virtual festival hosted by the Balearic ferry boat company.

Jessica Roda is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist, specializing in Jewish life in North America and France, and in international cultural policies. Her research interests include religion, performing arts, cultural heritage, gender, and media. Her book “Se réinventer au present” (PUR 2018), focusing on music and contemporary Sephardic life in France, was a finalist for the J. I. Segal Award for the best Quebec book on a Jewish theme, and received the UQAM-Respatrimoni Prize in heritage studies. Her forthcoming monograph, Beyond the Sheytl. Jewish Women, Performances, and the Reshaping of Orthodoxy in the Digital Age, investigates how music, films, and media made by ultra-Orthodox and former ultra-Orthodox women act as agents of social, economic and cultural changes and agency, challenging gender norms, orthodoxy and liberalism.  Jessica is also the author of many articles and book chapters in scholarly journals and edited books.

Assistant Professor in Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University (Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service), Jessica holds doctorates from the Sorbonne and the Université de Montréal. She has been a visiting fellow and scholar at several universities in Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Brazil. Her public-facing work has appeared in major newspapers, magazines and networks in Europe, the USA and South America; and she also trained as a  pianist, flautist and modern jazz dancer at the City of Paris Conservatory.