Department of Musicology
Subject: Musical Pan-Africanism - Ideology, Aesthetics and Technology
Supervisor: Prof. Louise Bethlehem and Prof. Edwin Seroussi
Bio: Yair received his BA in Psychology and Amirim Honors Program and his MA in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the last four years, he was a doctoral researcher in a European Research Council project "Apartheid--The Global Imaginary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation 1948-1990", supervised by Prof. Louise Bethlehem. His dissertation research explores interrelations between music and political thought in post-colonial Africa, focusing primarily on Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire. Drawing on methodologies from ethnomusicology, cultural history, and cultural studies, his research seeks to illuminate the role of music created in transnational spaces in discourses of nationalism, decolonization, pan-Africanism, and modernity. His research was presented in international conferences in the U.S, Germany, South Africa, Senegal, and Ghana, and was published in the journals Social Dynamics and Interventions. He has also taught at the Hebrew University (musicology department) and Ben-Gurion University (African studies) courses on popular and African music. Besides his academic activity, Yair plays the guitar and the kora (a West African harp) and performs in international stages with the group Gulaza.
Publications:
Hashachar, Yair. 2017. “Playing the Backbeat in Conakry: Miriam Makeba and the Cultural Politics of Sékou Touré’s Guinea, 1968–1986.” Social Dynamics 43 (2): 259–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2017.1364467.
Hashachar, Yair. 2018. "Guinea Unbound: Performing Pan-African Cultural Citizenship between Algiers 1969 and the Guinean National Festivals." Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2018.1508932
Rotenstreich Stipend 2018/19