"Sontinuity: Letters, Sounds and Judeo-Spanish Epistemologies of Being"
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: is article explores the epistemological and ontological significance of Judeo-Spanish sound as a medium of Sephardi continuity, or sontinuity. rough sound studies, it examines how post-expulsion Sephardim preserved and reimagined identity through voice, song, and recording. Using two case studies—David ben Moshe Attias’s La Guerta de Oro (1778) and early twentieth-century EMI recordings—the study analyzes how Sephardi sonic practices negotiated between Ottoman concepts of destiny (a la Turka) and Western rationality (a la Franka). Drawing on Barthes, Derrida, and Lévi-Strauss, Elbaz argues that Sephardi vocality functions as both memory and thought, transmitting knowledge through vibration, breath, and resonance. e Sephardi voice becomes a phenomenology of endurance, transforming sound into a living archive of belonging. Ultimately, sontinuity articulates how the act of sounding sustains Sephardi being, linking linguistic expression, spiritual inheritance, and communal persistence across time.
Source: Apollo (University of Cambridge)
DOI: 10.17863/cam.122747
Author: Elbaz, Vanessa Paloma
Language: English
Topic: Sound Studies and Aurality
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7105150714
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