Contribution short abstract:

The paper explores Yemeni Jewish oral culture stored in folklore archives, focusing on the work of four key scholars who studied Yemeni folklore in Israel.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper explores interpretations of Yemeni-Jewish oral culture through the lens of folklore archives, focusing on the work of four key scholars who studied Yemeni-Jewish folklore between the 1930s and 1970s in Palestine-Israel. Yemeni Jews have fascinated European Jewish scholars since the 19th century, and Yemeni Jewish sound, notably language and music, received much ethnographic attention. The orientalist S.D. Goitein conducted linguistic studies of Yemeni proverbs, while Hebrew writer Haim Hazaz produced literary works based on ethnographic interviews with Yemeni immigrants. Ethnomusicologist Edith Gerson-Kiwi conducted recordings aimed at transcribing "oriental melodies," and dance researcher Gurit Kadman worked to revive Yemeni dance traditions.

The four scholar's archives consist of diverse media - from textual mediation of language in the 1940s, text and audio recording of folksongs in the 1950s, to audio recordings and silent films in the 1970s. Moreover, the persons at the heart of this study had different objectives: academic research, literary writing, or reviving traditions. Consequently, their interactions with Yemeni assistants, mediators, and informants were diverse.

Through these cases the paper will discouss how such mediated knowledge was shaped by researcher-interlocutor dynamics and archival processes. It will further consider how these historical materials are renegotiated in processes of re-writing or unwriting Judeo-Arab heritage in 21st-century Israel.