Several years ago, a friend of mine invited me one day to come with her and attend an evening class at a Jewish Studies center in Tel-Aviv about Jewish traditional songs. At first this didn't sound especially attractive to me, I even suspected it to be terribly dull and boring.
Then she told me that this wasn't one of those workshops where religious people lure non-religious people into making a "khazara be-tshuva", a "return to faith". Quite on the contrary, this workshop had been kicked off by a student from Jerusalem: as a student in musicology, he had chosen to study the various traditions of Jewish "Piyyut" - liturgical songs - among the various and numerous Jewish communities; while doing so, he came to realize that while Piyyut is indeed a very complex music, fully mastered by only relatively few people - all religious people going to temple - and that this tradition was in danger to fade away and disappear.
During his field research, he had had this idea that Piyyut has an enchanting power of its own, even for those who are not religious.
This gave him the idea to take Piyyut out of the synagogues and to create an evening course open to all, where people would learn Piyyut, sing together and experience its charm and power by themselves.
On that evening, when I attended this evening class for the first time, the teacher had invited as a guest a "khazan" from Jerusalem who was about to sing for us a Piyyut on a poem written by the Spanish Jew Yehuda Halevy (11th century AC). The Piyyut melody came from the Jewish Moroccan tradition; the "Paytan" (Jewish liturgy singer) came from the Moroccan Nachlaot synagogue in Jerusalem.
By then I still wasn't convinced that I was really into this whole event, but I stayed out of politeness. After a theoretical introduction by the teacher, the Paytan began singing - and within seconds I had goosebumps all over my body. I was amazed how one single singer, without any instrumental accompaniment, could trigger such an intense emotional effect. Up until now I enjoy listening to Piyyutim on the Internet (Piyyut).
Another fact which I found very striking was that while Piyyut is mostly something that is connected to Oriental Jews who have stronger ties to religion than most Israeli Jews of European origin, it seemed that most of the people attending this class were non-religious Israeli of European origin. They too seemed to be under the spell of the Piyyut.
When the Paytan finished singing his songs, the teacher announced that now we were about to learn and rehearse singing this same song, which was what everybody in the class had been waiting for. The Paytan himself explained where to make short pauses and where to take a breath during singing; it was a deeply touching and tremendously exciting experience.
For those who would like to read more about this subject, I recommend reading the following articles: Jewish liturgical songs, Jewish encyclopedia.
I attended this course for several months and discovered that Piyyut is full of surprises: the same song from ancient times may be sung very differently in various Jewish liturgies; liturgies are as numerous as there are specific Jewish communities: Jerusalem Ladino songs, Moroccan, Algerian, Persian, Yemenite and Ashkenazi piyyutim, just to name a few (see: Singing communities).
To those who feel attracted by spiritual songs, I invite you to make a virtual trip around the world of Piyyutim.
Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment