Over the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest in the music of India’s Jewish community. Indeed, the formation of a close-knit community of Indo-Judaic Studies in academia as a whole roughly paralleled the rise in interest in Indian Jewish music. Sara Manasseh, an ethnomusicologist in the vanguard of this movement, has partnered with record producer Julian Futter on the release of Shir Hodu: Jewish Song from Bombay in the 1930s, a fascinating compact disc. According to the press announcement for the producers’ earlier collaboration, Shbahoth: Iraqi-Jewish Song from the 1920s, the CD contains fifteen restored tracks that were recovered from a series of 78 rpm records, several of which Futter allegedly discovered by chance (2009). “Until the release of this compilation, experts had presumed no recordings of Jewish music had been made in pre-independence India,” according to the booklet (n.p.). As a result, the recording’s clear objective is documentary, and the creators have accomplished a remarkable job in this regard.
Source: https://ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/journal/volume/15/piece/483
