Kesher Talk

Jews in odd places: Uganda: Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, an ethnomusicologist at Tufts University and the executive director of the university's Hillel foundation, has managed to maintain contact with the Abayudaya, a small and little-known community of African Jews, whose music he recorded for the recently released " Abayudaya: Music from the Jewish People of Uganda" (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings).

The Abayudaya are a bush community in eastern Uganda comprising about 700 people whose ancestors converted to Judaism in 1919. (Abayudaya means "the Jewish people" in Luganda, the main language of Uganda.) Today, the Abayudaya walk an hour or two to the nearest town, Mbale, to Internet cafes where they e-mail messages halfway around the world to Summit, who is working on a Web site for the Smithsonian Institution, translating the community's songs into English from the five dialects of Ugandan language in which they were recorded.

Indeed, upon first hearing "Abayudaya," I did a double take: The voices and melodies are clearly African, but the words switch between Hebrew and the Baganda, Basoga, Bagisu, Bagwere and Banyole dialects. As reported in the Forward last January, the songs include familiar prayers such as "Adon Olam," "Lecha Dodi" and "Hinei Ma Tov," as well as Ugandan folk tunes, political songs and psalms. (from The Forward)

posted by William @ 1/05/2004 08:31:00 AM