art scene feature sing ers ght Miriam’s dau • by Robert L. Cohen ing and rejoice, O daughter has birthed a vigorous revival of music- of Zion,” exhorts the making—liturgical and secular; folk, art, “ prophet Zechariah (2:14). and popular—on the part of Miriam’s It is an injunction that daughters. contemporaryS American-Jewish women musicians, singers, composers, and song- her father’s daughter writers are increasingly heeding. If Miriam is the oft- To some extent, they are merely echo- cited historical in- ing their Biblical forebears. After Moses spiration for Jewish leads the Children of Israel in the Shirat women’s music Hayam (the Song of the Sea, after the today, the zaide of Children of Israel cross the Red Sea or the Jewish musical Sea of Reeds), his sister, Miriam, leads renaissance generally, for women as for the women in dance—and, according to men, has unquestionably been the late some interpretations, song—accompanied Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, whose some- by timbrels (Exodus 15:20Ð21). (Some times poignant, sometimes exhilarating classical commentaries argue that Miriam melodies—composed in an Americanized led all of Israel—women and men.) style of Hasidic niggunim, or spiritual The Bible tells of other women chants—are sung by Jews, of every de- singing—wedding songs, funeral wails, nomination and no denomination, all even battle hymns—but rabbinical prohi- over the world. bitions beginning in the early Christian Shlomo was renowned for empower- era minimized women’s public music- ing and even ordaining women—and he making—until now. In contemporary continued on next page America, the “democratization,” or depro- fessionalization, of Jewish religious and MIRIAM’S DAUGHTERS, FROM TOP TO musical life, along with the powerful rise BOTTOM: NESHAMA CARLEBACH, DEBBIE of Jewish feminism and the appealing FRIEDMAN, ELIZABETH SWADOS, AND eclecticism of American musical models, BASYA SCHECHTER 35 virtually insisted that his daughter of Israel.” I am not surprised; there is Neshama Carlebach go out into the an entrancing, hypnotic spirituality to world and sing (notwithstanding Neshama’s in-person singing. rabbinical strictures that, according to On recordings, there is an earthy some interpretations, mandate that sensuousness to her rendition of her women should sing only for other father’s melodies—I sometimes think I’m women). Neshama sang at concerts hearing Ofra Haza meets Shlomo together with her father during the last Carlebach. The originals on her new CD five years of his life, and has since sung are passionate expressions of seamlessly “My music for audiences—Orthodox and non- braided, at once spiritual and (perhaps) Orthodox, women only and mixed, romantic longing and loss; the title song just happens; Jewish and non-Jewish—in Europe and could easily serve as the rubric for all of Israel and “from California to the New Neshama’s singing, whether of niggunim York Island” in this country—including or of original songs. it comes from such venues as the Temple of the Universe, a meditation retreat in Florida. the high priestess of healing the heart.” She has recorded her father’s But if Shlomo melodies on NESHAMA CARLEBACH: Carlebach is the SOUL and, with her father, on zaide of Jewish HANESHAMA SHEL SHLOMO (a play musical renewal on the Hebrew meaning of “neshama”: today, Debbie soul); and she has since issued Friedman is DANCING WITH MY SOUL, which unquestionably the First Lady of features five renditions of Shlomo American-Jewish song, whose lyrical melodies—four of them never before settings (many of them now standards) recorded—along with seven original of traditional or adapted Hebrew—and songs in English, many of them some original English—texts, recorded collaborations with her new musical on some 17 albums in the last three partner, jazz pianist David Morgan. decades, have been sung by hundreds Like her father, Neshama assigns a or thousands of Jews at synagogue and much greater role to Jewish music than healing services, adult retreats and youth that of mere entertainment. Her singing, camps, children’s schools and Federation along with the teachings and stories conventions—and at Carnegie Hall she shares at classes and concerts, is, (preserved on DEBBIE FRIEDMAN AT she hopes, a means of inspiring her CARNEGIE HALL). listeners to listen to, and trust, their Though Friedman’s original musical heart—as she followed hers in singing; influences were very much American of giving strength to Jewish women in (mostly 60s folk and pop singers) rather particular; and of conveying her own than Eastern European, her musical understanding of (Orthodox) Judaism sensibility is nonetheless Hasidic in its as ultimately not constricting but life- emphasis on the spontaneous: “My giving, and joyous. She treasures a letter music just happens,” she avers; “it comes from a non-Jewish woman advising that from the heart.” (She volunteers that at Neshama’s concert (in Vienna), she she can’t read a note.) And her music “was falling in love again with the God is also Hasidic in its accessibility. “My 36 music doesn’t belong to me,” she insists. inspired by Jewish feminist concerns. In “They [her listeners] own it.” “Miriam’s Slow Snake Dance at the Friedman has a deeply spiritual sense Riverside,” she combines traditional of vocation, seeing herself as a vehicle words and chant with original Hebrew for expressing Jewish texts, nourishing and English words and a new melody her listeners’ souls, and creating com- to create an exultant anthem. munity. Her own illness, brought on by Hirschhorn’s “Circle Chant” (included a bad reaction to medication, has been on SKIES ABLAZE; a revised version is her gateway to healing through music; on ROOTS & WINGS) is an even more one gets the feeling, in fact, that Fried- successful anthem: widely recorded; “I still man’s open-hearted melodies are a means sung at demonstrations about everything of pursuing her own tentative, earnest from El Salvador and the homeless to believe spiritual search. “I want to know why nuclear weapons disposal; and included life is so sweet,” she offers, “and why in Singing the Living Tradition, the life is so bitter.” hymnal of the Unitarian Universalist music is Association. And launched into the Miriam’s slow snake dance world, like her other compositions, on revolution.” Sweet harmonies what Ronnie Gilbert, once of the have been invig- Weavers, calls “a voice of pure honey.” orating Linda Hirschhorn’s life music as midrash since she was a Like Hirschhorn and child—listening to Debbie Friedman, recordings of union songs, Weavers theater composer songs, and early Israeli folk songs, and Elizabeth Swa- singing in a yeshiva choir in the second dos was influenced or third grade. (She subsequently sang by American folk in New York’s Zamir Chorale and in the music, but she wants to express rougher San Francisco and Oakland symphony emotions in her “folk operas” and ora- choruses.) Now, as a singer, songwriter, torios. That requires, for her, a musical and cantor, she finds getting people to eclecticism—incorporating aspects of sing in harmony (which she does often gospel, rock, jazz, and blues—and some- at adult Jewish retreats) exhilarating— thing of the “emotional ambivalence” and composing rounds, which she views that she hears in the music of Kurt as an easy way to get people singing, Weill, which pervaded her family home fun: “I always hear things in several in Buffalo: a “spiritual sound” that voices.” could be bitter and ironic, and sad even With her Vocolot ensemble (“clear, when gay, in what she considers a very strong, sweet voices of women singing,” Jewish way. according to one folk music magazine), Evoking the multiple dimensions and Hirschhorn has recorded enchanting new emotional complexity of the protagonists settings of traditional and adapted liturgy, in her song cycle (and CD) BIBLE WOM- a couple of dozen original settings of EN meant, for Swados, making poet Marcia Falk’s alternative and feminist “midrashic choices” (that is, rooted in liturgy, and some original songs, many Biblical commentary and interpretation) 37 to interpret their lives and BASYA SCHECHTER AND HER personalities—and then trying to GROUP, PHARAOH’S DAUGHTER express, in music, both what she learned from studying sources and mornings—that sounds Turkish, her visceral responses to these an original English composition characters. She sees Miriam as that sounds more exotic than “the first woman rock ’n’ roll any of the ostensibly Jewish singer,” needing gospel music pieces, a setting of a Biblical to evoke her essence; Sarah, on verse that tries to convey “what the other hand, was “all about Pharaoh’s daughters might have irony, plus a strong faith.” Her sounded like as Egyptian wom- “tragic humor” could best be conveyed goal of every Seder. (In Swados’s family, en,” a traditional Ladino song dressed via a Jewish blues, in the style of Sarah they sang every song in the Haggadah.) up with an original introduction, and a Vaughan. “I still believe music is revolution,” variety of world music riffs on Biblical Swados has always had several sets Swados says—and merging the past and and even Talmudic texts, rendered in of listeners: not-quite-mainstream New the present in music she identifies as several inflections of Hebrew. (“Even our York City theater audiences (she’s won perhaps her foremost musical challenge. pronunciation of Hebrew is eclectic,” three Obies and numerous other awards she cheerfully owns.) The overall expe- and fellowships), a teenage audience, the rebel from Borough Park