Judith Cohen is an ethnomusicologist, medievalist and singer. Her Ph.D. dissertation (Université de Montréal, Musicologie, 1989) focused on music in Canadian Sephardic communities, and her M.A. (Université de Montréal, Sciences médiévales, 1980) on women musicians in the three monotheistic religions of medieval Iberia. Since the 1990s, her research and publications have also focused on music and identity in Spain's "three cultures" festivals, and on the role of music in the Crypto-Jewish communities of rural Portugal. The Spain Consultant for the Alan Lomax Collection since 2000, Dr Cohen has also continued her fieldwork in Sephardic and non-Jewish communities in Morocco, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans, and is well-known as a singer and workshop leader in these and related music traditions, including pan-European balladry and shared themes in Yiddish and Sephardic songs. Born and raised in Montreal, she has taught at York University since the early 1990s, and is a founding member of Montreal performance ensembles Gerineldo (Moroccan Sephardic music) and Sanz Cuer (a women's ensemble specializing in medieval music).
Judith Cohen
