"Shir Cushi": African-American Spirituals in Israel during the 1950's and 1960's

During the 1950's and 1960's local performance of Negro-Spirituals songs was popular in Israel. These songs were titled "Shirim Cushim" were often translated to Hebrew and were performed within communities and culture venues such as concerts, radio shows and choir conventions. This repertoire was highly popular thanks to the biblical textual content of the songs and by a certain feeling of identification between blacks and Jews and their shared history and fate. However, the local musical performance of Spirituals in Israel managed to change the original context and meaning of the songs as religious slave songs that were written out of oppression and hardship into a reality of utopic Zionism in a secular and socialist environment. My work has examined both solo and choral performance in Hebrew and English, both types of local performances were highly influenced by the activist, singer and actor Paul Robeson (1898-1976) who functions as the main role model vocally, aesthetically and politically. This topic also raises a question of inner racial and class differences at the time, since these songs were mostly performed and consumed to by middle and upper class Ashkenazi section of the population. The last chapter of this works discuses four examples of Hebrew translations and local performances of "Shirim Cushim". All examples and most of the information used in this work were based on primary sources such as archive recordings, musical scores, newspaper articles, letters and interviews.