Ofer GAZIT

Education

2016                PhD, Music, Department of Music, University of California, Berkeley. Dissertation title: Sounds Like Home: Immigrant Musicians in the New York Jazz Scene.

2010                MA, Historical Musicology, Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel-Aviv University. Tel-Aviv, Israel.

2009                BA, Double Major, Musicology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

Positions

2024 –             Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy.

2022– 2024     Senior Lecturer (with tenure), Musicology Program, Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel-Aviv University. Tel-Aviv, Israel.

2017– 2022     Lecturer, tenure track, Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel-Aviv University. Tel-Aviv, Israel.

                        Courses (by field):

Classical Music History: Music History Ia, (Middle Ages and Renaissance) Music History Ib (Baroque) Music History IIa, (Classical period) Music History IIb (Romantic period).

Non-Western Classical Music History: Composing a Minority: Western Music and Its Others; Music in Latin America; The Race for Music: Musical Others in Inter-War Europe.

Music Theory and Music Cognition: Introduction to Music Analysis; Musical Performance: Mind, Body, Environment.

Jazz and Popular Music: Music and Auditory Culture; Jazz and Blues: Historically Informed Performance; Singing a Home: Music as Social Action; Music and Freedom: Social, Geographic and Musical Mobility; Music and Psychedelia: Culture and Cognition; Sound in the City: Musical and Architectural Interventions; Free Jazz; Music, Sound – Nature, Culture; Digitalization in Music; Popular Music.

2017                Adjunct Assistant Professor Humanities Department, City University of New York – City Tech, New York City, NY. United States

                   Course: Course: Musical Styles 

2016                Adjunct Assistant Professor, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and the Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility, The New School, New York City, NY. United States

                        Course: Musical Diasporas.

2014-2016       Instructor, Department of Music, University of California, Berkeley

                   Courses: Music in American Cultures. Music of the Great Migration

Introduction to Western Art Music. Introduction to Music Perception and Cognition, Music in Israel/Palestine.

 

Visiting Fellowships

2022–2023      Visiting Scholar, Music Department, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.

2022                Erasmus Visiting Scholar, Musicology and Cultural Heritage Department, Pavia University, Cremona, Italy.

 

Other Academic Professional Experience

 

2021-2024       Member of the Teaching Committee of the David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv Israel.

 

2018–2021      Member of the Scholarship Committee of the David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv Israel.

 

2021–2022      Member of the Committee on Performance Research of the David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv Israel.

                       

2020–2022      Representative of Lecturers at the Faculty Council, David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv Israel.

 

2022                Co-Organizer of lecture and concert series ‘Quadrivium’ Music and Science Coming Together – BMSM and Weizmann Institute of Science

 

2022                Co-organizer of the workshop “Mapping the Greek soundscapes of Tel Aviv: Methodological Perspectives” Tel-Aviv University, Israel, David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts, Buchmann Mehta School of Music, Musicology department.

 

2018                Organizer of a two-weeks Sound Studies and Ethnography Lab (Biennale Urbana, Venice, Italy).

 

2013                University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, USA. Department of Music. Co-organizer of the symposium Why Do We Improvise: Sound, Technology, Interaction.

2012                University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, USA. Department of Music. Editorial Board, Repercussions: Graduate Student Journal of the Music Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

 

2010–2013      University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, USA. Department of Music. Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. Research Assistant, Prof. David Wessel.

 

2003–2010      Tel-Aviv University, Israel, David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts, Buchmann Mehta School of Music, Musicology department.  
Research assistant of prof. Zohar Eitan

 

2003–2010      Tel-Aviv University, Israel, David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts, Buchmann Mehta School of Music, Musicology department.

Research assistant of prof. Michal Grover Friedlander.

 

Publications

Monographs        Jazz Migrations: Movement as Place among New York Musicians.     

Oxford University Press (Spring 2024)  

 

Tensions: African Drums, American Dreams and the New York Jazz Scene in the 1960s manuscript in progress (three chapters completed)

 

Edited Volume:

                        Home in the Making: Arts of Asylum Seekers in Israel. Eds. Ofer Gazit, Hamutal Sadan and Sarah Hankins. Routledge Studies in Migration and Diaspora.  Routledge (under contract, expected 2025)

 

Articles Published

2024                Spiritual Commodification: A Political Economy of African Jazz in the Civil Rights Era. The Musical Quarterly, 107(1). pp. 1-13 

2024                Gazit, Ofer and Nili Belkind, Affective Authenticity: South African singer Letta Mbulu Transforms Yoruba Hymn “Ise Oluwa” into Roots’ Theme Song. Journal of Popular Music Studies. 36(1), 51-78.

2020                Passing Tones: Shifting National, Social and Musical Borders in Jazz Age Harlem Jazz and Culture. 3(1). (ARSC finalist, best historical research in recorded jazz, 2021)

2020                A Drum, Deferred: Solomon Ilori in the New York Jazz scene, 1958–1964. Jazz Research Journal 12.2

2016                Sound at First Sight: Jam Sessions and immigrants in Brooklyn, New York Jazz Perspectives. 9(1), pp. 27-46

Articles Submitted

                        Kingston Blues: Ideological Infrastructures in the City of Reggae, American Music, Special Issue on the Caribbean.

 

Dolphy’s Birds: Freedom, Migration and Other Avian Metaphors in Jazz. Jazz Perspectives, under review

 

Articles in progress

 

Dewel Up the Band: Mulatu Astatke, Duke Ellington and the Diplomatic Amplification of Ethio-Jazz

 

Making Kin in the New York Scene: Masekela, Gillespie and jazz fatherhood.    

 

New Home Every Night: Migrant Drag Performance from Puerto Rico to New York City.

 

Resounding Home: Umm Kulthum and/as Sonic Belonging.

Book Chapters

2024                Ofer Gazit, Hamutal Sadan, and Sarah Haskins, Introduction: Art as a Form of Asylum Seeking in Israel, Ofer Gazit, Hamutal Sadan, and Sarah Hankins, in Home in the Making: Arts of Asylum Seekers in Israel. London: Routledge (under contract, expected 2025) 

 

2024                The Rhythm of Asylum: Music and Temporality in Tel Aviv’s Congolese Community, in Ofer Gazit, Hamutal Sadan, and Sarah Hankins. editors, Home in the Making: Arts of Asylum Seekers in Israel. London: Routledge. (under contract, expected 2025) 

 

2024                Gazit, O. Yiakoumaki, V. Theodosiou A. “Glykeria’s Shabechi Yerushalay'im: A Greek-Israeli love story?” Popular Musics of the Greek World, British School of Athens, Athens, Greece (forthcoming).

 

2023                Musical Extractivism and the Commercial After-Life of San Juan's (PR) La Perla in Ambiances, Tourism and the City, eds. Iñigo Sánchez-Fuarros, Daniel Paiva and Daniel Malet Calvo. London: Routledge, 29-42.   

 

2023                YouTube Logics and the Extraction of Musical Space in San Juan (PR) La Perla and Kingston's (JM) Fleet Street.  in New Approaches to Sound, Music, and Media eds. Holly Rogers, Carol Vernallis and Lisa Perrott. London: Bloomsbury, 108-120.

 

Book reviews

2022                Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music, and Migration in Post-World War II Paris. By Rashida Braggs. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Jazz Diaspora: Music and Globalisation. By Bruce Johnson. New York: Routledge, 2019. Jazz and Culture. 5(1)

Articles in Popular media

2019                “ciò che non si sa ascoltare” Resistenza e Futuro, no. 1 2019, 46-47

 

Media

2021                One 35m. Documentary film “A Change in Tones: The High Life of Solomon Ilori” - https://vimeo.com/729998110

Grants

2024–2029      Island in the Stream: Climate Related Disasters and the Rhythms of Caribbean Music scenes (I-STREAM) European Research Council Starting Grant

2019 – 2022    Israeli Science Foundation Individual Research Grant “Tensions: African Drums,

American Dreams and the New York Jazz Scene in the 1960s”

2015 – 2016    Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Department of Music, University of California, Berkeley. 

2014 – 2015    Diller Family Dissertation Research and Writing Grant, University of California, Berkeley.

2013 – 2014    Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkley.

2010 – 2012    Fulbright Two-Year Doctoral Student Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley.
 

Papers Presented at Scientific Meetings

2024                “Kingston Blues, Playing Rock in the City of Reggae,” Society for American Music, Detroit, MI, United States.

2024                A Few Listening Exercises: Or, Why is it Good to Listen in Circles. Images, Sound and Performance as Ways of Knowing. International Workshop. Ca Foscari University, Venice, Italy.   

2024                Space Ownerships: Occupied Sonic Territories in East Jerusalem and Jaffa, “Route barrée / Barrer la route.
À propos de l'interruption dans les territoires extractifs” Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris, France.  

2023                Temporal Rhythms: Music, Tourism and Climate in the Caribbean, Department of Geography, University Rovira i Virgili, Spain.   

2023                Africa in Stereo: The Unexpected Success of African Jazz in 1960s New York. Faculty of Arts, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

2023                Toda gran zamba encierra una baguala dormida: Freedom and Captivity in Saltenian Cow Songs. The Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA), (Leticia, Colombia).

2023                Jazz and pan-Africanism in the 1960s University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. Department of Music: Jazz Styles and History.

2023                African drums, American Dreams: From Africa to New York in the 1960s University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. Department of Music: Jazz Styles and History.

2022                Translating Authenticity: Performing Africa between Lagos, Johannesburg and New YorkUniversity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. Department of Music: Jazz Styles and History.

2022                Beyond Borders and Bar-lines: Entry points in New York's Migrant jazz scenes. DEA Lab -- Ca’ Foscari University Ethnology and Anthropology seminar Venice, Italy.

2022                Ise Oluwa: Letta Mbulu and the Migration of Song Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science.

2022                Ise Oluwa: Letta Mbulu and the Migration of Song, Music, Migration and Mobility conference. Royal College of Music, London and Online

2022                Political in Spirit: African Jazz in the Civil Rights Era. ICTM. Lisbon. Portugal.

2022                Musical Extractivism and the Commercial After-Life of San Juan's (PR) La Perla.  Ambiance, Tourism and the City. Centro de Informaçao Urbana de Lisboa (CIUL), Lisbon. Portugal. 

2021                “Letting the Canon Loose: Improvisation, performance, and the Fear of Musical Works” 12th Israeli-German Frontiers of Humanities Symposium. (Online)

2021                A Change in Tones: The High Life of Solomon Ilori. Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting (Online). 

2021                “Sexual Hearing: African Jazz and Black Masculinity in the Civil Rights Era”.  The 57th Royal Musical Association Annual Conference. Newcastle University, England. 14-16 September 2021.       

2021                Gazit Ofer and Levi Ron, "Resonant Tensions: (Re)positioning African Jazz between Europe and America". Documenting Jazz International Conference. Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. 23-26 June 2021.

2020                (S)pacing the Migrant City: Resonant tensions and the Urban Soundscape, Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting (Online).   

2020                Musical Extractivism and the Commercial After-Life of San Juan’s (PR) La Perla and Kingston’s (JM) Fleet Street” in Like, share and subscribe: Youtube, music and cyberculture before and after the new decade, New University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal (Online)

2020                “Listening to the Migrant City: Musical Frictions at the Margins,” Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future, Royal Anthropological Institute, London UK (Online).

2019                Drag Stories: Performing Cinderella between Puerto Rico and New York City, Haifa Workshop for Performance, Department of Theater and Performance, Haifa University, Israel.

2019                Glykeria’s Shabechi Yerushalay'im: A Greek-Israeli love story? Popular Musics of the Greek World, British School of Athens, Athens, Greece.

2019                New Home Every Night: Migrant Drag Performance from Puerto Rico to New York City, Society for American Music, New Orleans, LA, United States.

2018                Dolphy’s Birds: Freedom, Migration and Other Avian Metaphors in Jazz. Human Voice, Animal Voice, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. 

2018                Migrant Music among New York-based Syrian Refugees. Israeli Forum for Ethnomusicology, Jerusalem, Israel.

2018                Passing Tones, Jazz, Borders and Mass Migration, DEA Lab -- Ca’ Foscari University Ethnology and Anthropology seminar Venice, Italy.

2018                New Home Every Night: Echoes in Migrant Drag Performance from Puerto Rico to New York City, Southeast and Caribbean Chapter, Society for Ethnomusicology, New Orleans, LA, United States. (Deferred)

2018                Where is the Border? Jazz and Migration in the Harlem Renaissance, Israeli Forum for Ethnomusicology, Open University, Raanana, Israel.

2017                Resounding Home: Umm Kulthum and/as Sonic Belonging. Flux: State(s) of Change, The New School for Social Research., New York, NY. 

2016                The Missed Education of Solomon Ilori: Tension and collaboration in 1960s Pan-African Jazz. American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A

2016                Lost and Found in the Urban Sound Maze: Improvisers on the Work-Place Continuum, Locations and Dislocations: An Ecomusicological Conversation, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton, N.J. U.S.A

2016                Jazz, Terraza 7, and Immigrant Folk in Jackson Heights, Queens” Musical Cartographies, Department of Music, Harvard University, Cambridge, M.A. U.S.A

2016                African Drums, American Dreams: Immigrant musicians in the Civil Rights Movement,” Intercultural Music Conference, Department of Music, University of California San Diego. San Diego, C.A., U.S.A.

2013          The Other’s Side is Nowhere? Locality, Discipline and Industry in the Study of

                   Improvisation talk given at Why Do We Improvise: Sound, Technology,                                   Interaction Improvisation Symposium, Department of Music, U.C Berkeley,                         Berkeley, C.A., U.S.A.  

2011                When Push Comes to Shove: Rhythmic Behavior in Improvised Walking Bass Gazit, O., Battenberg, E., Wessel D., Poster Presentation, Society for Music Perception and Cognition Annual meeting, Rochester, New-York, U.S.A

2011                Means and Meanings: The Expansive Politics of Improvisation Paper given at Iltor: Interdisciplinary Workshop on Improvisation, Department of Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel.

 

Participation in Research Workshops

2022                Quadrivium: Music and Science coming together. Weizmann Institute of Science and Tel Aviv University, Israel (Co-Organizer).

2018                Acoustic Phenomenology, Venice Science Gallery, Ca’ Foscari University Venice, Italy.

2018                Tel Aviv University Sound Studies and Ethnography Lab, Venice, Italy. (Organizer)

2017                Ethnographic Experimentation: Fieldwork Devices and Companions, European Association of Social Anthropologists, Lisbon, Portugal

 

Professional Affiliations

2017-present   Israeli Forum for Ethnomusicology

2015-present       Society for American Music

2010- present      Society for Ethnomusicology

2013- present      American Anthropological Association

2016-2017       Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility, The New School for Social Research.

2011-2016 American Cultures Center – University of California, Berkeley.

2008-2011 American Musicological Society

2011           Society for Music Perception and Cognition

 

Invited Talks and Presentations

2022                Translating Authenticity: Performing Africa between Lagos, Johannesburg and New York. Department of Music, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.

2022                Beyond Borders and Bar-lines: Entry points in New York’s Migrant jazz scenes, Department of Anthropology Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy.

2022                Stepping Out of the Rhythm: Synchronization in Medicine and Music. Tel Aviv University, Israel   

2021                The Camera as a Research Tool in Ethnomusicology. Bar Ilan University, Department of Music colloquium series.

2019                Learning How to Hang: Immigrant jazz scenes in Brooklyn and Queens. Bar Ilan University, Department of Music colloquium series.

2019                Sound Studies, or is Sound Wind? Department of Anthropology, Ca’ Foscari University Venice, Italy.

2019                Singing a Home: Music and Social Action, Tel Aviv University Board of Governors meeting.

2018                Studying Migration through Sound, Department of Anthropology Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy.

2017                “Migration and National Identity in the Music of Freddie Mercury” Tel Aviv University Public Lecture Series, “Atnachta,” Tel Aviv, Israel.  

2014                “John Coltrane’s Goldsboro Express as a Migration Narrative” invited talk at Music:Text Colloquium, Department of Music, Tel Aviv University.