Concert: The Fragrant Garden: from al-Andalus to the Sephardi Mediterranean

Experience the beauty of Morocco's Sephardi musical traditions in an intimate concert by Dr Vanessa Paloma Elbaz. Through songs passed down across generations, the performance explores themes of memory, migration and belonging, revealing a rich cultural heritage shaped by centuries of coexistence. Led by acclaimed performer and researcher Dr Vanessa Paloma Elbaz. Featuring Mohammed Farsi Alaoui on violin and Abdelilah Benkirane on percussion. About Dr Vanessa Paloma Elbaz Vanessa Paloma Elbaz is an ethnomusicologist, performer and scholar whose work explores the cultural histories of sound across the Sephardi diaspora following the 1492 expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula. Combining ethnography, historical musicology and sound studies, her research examines how music, language and oral traditions shape memory, identity and belonging across the Mediterranean, with particular attention to Jewish-Muslim cultural encounters, gender and migration. In 2013, she founded KHOYA: Les Archives Sonores du Maroc Juif, an archive dedicated to preserving and sharing the musical and audiovisual heritage of Morocco's Jewish communities. She has held numerous prestigious research fellowships, including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship for her project on Judeo-Spanish songbooks as technologies of cultural transmission. Dr Elbaz is Chair of the Mediterranean Music Studies Group of the International Council for Traditional Music and Dance (ICTMD) and serves on the boards of several international organisations dedicated to Jewish, Mediterranean and intercultural studies. Her current publications include a forthcoming monograph on women's song traditions in Sephardi Morocco and a co-edited volume on music, sound and memory in the Western Mediterranean, commissioned by the British Academy and Oxford University Press. Described by The New York Times as "a kind of one-woman roving museum of her own," Dr Elbaz's work has been featured by the BBC, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, France 24, NPR and other international media. Alongside her academic career, she is an internationally acclaimed performer of Sephardi musical traditions. About The Cambridge Festival of Islamic Arts The Cambridge Festival of Islamic Arts runs from 19 to 29 November 2026, bringing performances, exhibitions, lectures, and workshops to Cambridge's historic colleges, museums, and cultural spaces. Open to everyone, the festival celebrates the beauty and diversity of Islamic arts, and, fifty years on from the landmark 1976 World of Islam Festival, carries that spirit into our own time. Find out more at cfia.co.uk.