FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 09, 2016
New Mexico History Museum presents Vanessa Paloma Elbaz speaking on “De tu boca a los cielos (From Your Mouth to the Heavens): Women’s Songs and Stories at the Heart of Sephardic Identity.” Using musical examples, this free talk will demonstrate the richness of women’s oral traditions in the Sephardic world and the role of their voices in the continuity of Sephardic identity.
Where: New Mexico History Museum Auditorium in conjunction with the exhibition, Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition, and New World Identities.
When: Sunday, June 26 at 11 am.
Admission: Free with museum admission. NM residents with ID always free on Sundays.
Public Contact: 505-476-5200
About Vanessa Paloma Elbaz
The New York Times describes Vanessa Paloma Elbaz as a “one-woman roving museum.” She is an expert on Sephardic women and their music, popular culture, identity transmission, and language. Paloma Elbaz demonstrates the uniqueness of Sephardic ballads, and how music is used to define roles for men and women. Her groundbreaking work has been featured on television and radio in the United States, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Morocco, Egypt, Colombia, and the Arab Emirates, including PBS, NPR, PRI, the New York Times, France24 and Al Jazeera International, among others. The awards for her work range from being a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar to a research fellow at Hadassah Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University and Posen fellow. She is currently a research fellow in Paris at the Sorbonne’s Center for Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Studies. Paloma Elbaz is the director of KHOYA: Jewish Morocco Sound Archive, and she lives in Casablanca.
Media Contact: Josef Diaz, Curator, josef.diaz@state.nm.us, 505-476-5082.
With support from the Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation, Maurice Amado Foundation, and the New Mexico Humanities Council
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