Greeted with Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York

As the Soviet Union stood on the brink of collapse, thousands of Bukharian Jews left their homes from across the predominantly Muslim cities of Central Asia, to reestablish their lives in the United States, Israel and Europe. Today, about thirty thousand Bukharian Jews reside in New York City, settled into close-knit communities and existing as a quintessential American immigrant group. For Bukharian immigrants, music is an essential part of their communal self-definition, and musicians frequently act as cultural representatives for the group as a whole. Greeted with Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York explores the circumstances facing new American immigrants, using the music of the Bukharian Jews to gain entrance into their community and their culture. Author Evan Rapport investigates the transformation of Bukharian identity through an examination of corresponding changes in its music, focusing on three of these distinct but overlapping repertoires - maqom (classical or "heavy" music), Jewish religious music and popular party (or "light") music. Drawing upon interviews, participant observation and music lessons, Rapport interprets the personal perspectives of musicians who serve as community leaders and representatives. By adapting strategies acquired as an ethno-religious minority among Central Asian Muslim neighbors, Bukharian musicians have adjusted their musical repertoire in their new American home. The result is the creation of a distinct Bukharian Jewish American identity-their musical activities are changing the city's cultural landscape while at the same time providing for an understanding of the cultural implications of Bukharian diaspora. Greeted with Smiles is sure to be an essential text for ethnomusicologists and scholars of Jewish and Central Asian music and culture, Jewish-Muslim interaction and diasporic communities.

About the Author :
Evan Rapport is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Eugene Lang College and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

Review :
"Embedded throughout the book is the story of how Bukharian identity is established and sustained through music and how the experiences of resisting assimilation in a multi-ethnic, subsequently Soviet, context prepared Bukharian Jews to maintain identity in an urban American melting pot, itself challenged by models of cultural pluralism and mosaic multiculturalism that captured the national spotlight as they arrived. Recommended." --Choice "Evan Rapport's study of the arrival of cosmopolitan Bukharian musicians to New York City is gracefully written and deeply musical. It will bring a smile to any reader's face." -- Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music, Harvard University "Greeted With Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York offers the reader an engaging account of the rich musical life of the Bukharian Jews in New York City. It is the only scholarly monograph in English on Bukharian Jewish music and musicians and it adds to the small body of writings about the rich musical tradition of the Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union." - Amenah Youssefzadeh, author of Les bardes du Khorassan iranien: le bakhshi et son r�pertoire