Dan here! We made it through another year and are ready to start the new one with a really amazing conversation. I am so excited to share my (first ever) conversation with professor Devin Naar.
Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies and the chair of Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington. He’s a scholar of Sephardic culture and the Ladino language in all its expressive forms. As you might guess, the path to our conversation started a little different than usual. I first encountered Devin on a podcast from Jewish Currents that also featured two of our favorite guests (they are all my favorite guests), Ira Temple and Isabel Frey. I was smitten by Devin’s militant promoting of Ladino and Sephardic culture and of his reframing of diaspora as a source of “Multi-rootedness” rather than the common idea of being “Rootless”. While rootless has its gifts, this new idea seemed to connect many of the common themes and stories emerging from the conversations I had on this podcast. I knew I had to talk to him about his work and his story and I’m so glad he agreed to do it!
Our conversation covers a lot of history, both personal and beyond. Above all, Devin is a fellow deep diver, who’s work and thinking provides us with the opportunity to make deep connections from ourselves to the wider world. Just take a listen to all the ways the supposedly separate Sephardim and Yiddishim (the excellent Ladino term for Ashkenazi Jews) overlap in our history. I hope these stories and thoughts will feel like the revelation I felt hearing them. Beyond that, there’s the delightful fact that Devin and I simply got along really well from the first moments of meeting each other.
Radiant Others is a klezmer music podcast and part of being a klezmer musician has nearly always meant being part of the whole world and worlds of music and culture we find ourselves in. This conversation is full of big and fun ones that I loved learning about and I hope you will too.
Music on this episode:
El Dio Alto – Judy Frankel
El Dyo Alto (or El Dio Alto, or Kantika de Noche de Alhad) – Hazzan Isaac Azose
El Fuego – recorded in New York City in the 1920’s
El Incendio De Salonica – David Saltiel (1990s)
Makam sehnaz- Ye’erav leka adonay elohenu (pesrev) – Samuel Benaroya
Konyali: Hani Benim Elli Dirhem Pastirmam (Sweetheart From Konya: Where is My 50 Drachma of Cured Meat?) – Louis Matalon
Arvoles Yoran Por Luvias (Trees Cry For Rain) – Gloria Levy
Missirlu in Ladino – Jack Mayesh (recorded in 1941)
Mancevo Del Dor (A Modern Man) — The Guy Mendilow Ensemble
As we start our 9th year(!) of making episodes, we are in as full of a swing as we can be. That means that Beila and I get you episodes just about every month. As always, there is so, so much more that we wish we could do in terms of covering all the great new Yiddish music people are making, sharing epic stories from across our modern klezmer history, and bringing in people who broaden our ideas of who we are and can be! This is what we do and we wish we could do more! Please consider supporting our work on https://www.patreon.com/RadiantOthers, and tip us as https://tiptopjar.com/RadiantOthers
Radiant Others is produced by Dan Blacksberg and Beila Ungar.
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