Music, Ritual, and Falasha History

Kay Kaufman Shelemay's Music, Ritual, and Falasha History, published by Michigan State University Press in 1986, presents the first systematic recording, transcription and analysis of the liturgical music of the Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jewish community sometimes historically called Falasha, based on fieldwork Shelemay conducted in Ethiopia in the 1970s before large-scale emigration transformed the community. Shelemay is an ethnomusicologist specializing in Jewish and Ethiopian musical traditions. Its strength is that it preserved a documented record of liturgical practice as it existed in Ethiopia itself, work that could not be repeated in the same form once most of the community relocated to Israel. Its limit is that it documents one period's practice in one setting, so a claim about how Beta Israel liturgical life has since changed in Israel needs a later source addressing that transition.