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Exotic Songs of the Jewish Mideast
ARTS&LIFE
MUSIC
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Exotic Songs of the Jewish Mideast
Jewish-Persian singer Galeet Dardashti will perform at Temple Beth El’s Global Voices, Aug. 27-28.
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
When Jewish singer-scholar Galeet Dardashti developed a live performance that included the digital presence of her late and famed grandfather, Persian classical singer Yona Dardashti, she thought the setup was very original.
Soon, however, audience members started telling her about similar setups featuring the late and famed secular singer Natalie Cole, recognized for appearing live and augmented with a digital presence by her late dad, singer-pianist Nat King Cole.
While the Coles especially were noted for the New World approach to the enduring standard “Unforgettable,” written by Jewish composer Irving Gordon, Dardashti hopes that her many original programs — mixing Jewish-Persian liturgy and music — will be unforgettable as presented Aug. 27-28 at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township.
Cantor Rachel Gottlieb Kalmowitz, central to inviting Dardashti to appear at the temple’s annual Global Voices Weekend, has announced three separate presentations: Global Voices Summer Shabbat on Friday evening, Nosh and Knowledge on Saturday afternoon and “Monajat,” a reimagining of the Selichot ritual, on Saturday evening.
“With our Global Voices series, we are choosing to
bring Jewish musicians from many different backgrounds to share their particular genres of Jewish music,” Kalmowitz said. “We began with the bluegrass and old-time music influences of Nefesh Mountain followed by Israeli superstar David Broza, whose greatest influences are rock ’n’ roll and Spanish guitar.”
Dardashti will appear in the first in-person Global Voices Weekend with an emphasis on Sephardic and Mizrahi music.
“These will be the first public performances I’m doing since the pandemic so it’s a very exciting weekend for me,” said Dardashti, who is based in New York, serves as cantor and musician-in-residence at the Jewish Community Project Downtown in Manhattan and has been performing since age 3.
Her introduction to the stage came with being part of a family group headed by her father, Cantor Farid Dardashti, and folksinging mother, Sheila. She led High Holiday services last year but was only with the rabbi and the musicians as services were streamed.
A SPECIAL WEEKEND
Dardashti, who will be leading Shabbat services on Friday night in collaboration with the Temple Beth El clergy, will speak about herself and her journey as both musician and scholar performing and discussing Middle Eastern Jewish music. Although born and raised in the United States, she has been influenced by her Middle Eastern heritage.
On Saturday afternoon, Dardashti will be teaching a class on Sephardi poetic songs (piyutim) and will delve into the way these musical poetic traditions have evolved throughout Jewish history and came to have important meaning for Israeli pop music over the last 20 years.
The Saturday night program, including four New York jazz musicians who join in vocals, will feature “Monajat,” which means an intimate dialog with the Divine. The piece, honoring her grandfather, was created many years ago as commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Culture.
Accompanying the singer-scholar will be Dafer Tawil (percussion, ney, violin), Shanir Blumenkranz (acoustic bass, oud), Philip Mayer (percussion, electronics) and Max ZT (hammered dulcimer).
“I probably will be doing ‘Monajat’ in a slightly different way for the Temple Beth El performance because I am reworking it now for a recording and revisiting a lot of the music,” said Dardashti, who holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and has entertained in Michigan with her group, Divahn, a female quartet that presents traditional Middle Eastern music with contemporary arrangements.
“I’m recording this project with a big grant from the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. I’m looking at the piece with a new lens and insights into my grandfather that I didn’t have before I started working on a documentary film about him with my sister, Danielle.”
ACADEMIC SIDE
Although Dardashti started as a voice major at the University of Maryland, College Park, she decided to pursue a doctoral degree that would allow her to study music in a different context.
“I could be the nerd that I am, get deep into research and continue my musical interests and studies,” explained Dardashti, married to a lawyer and the mother of two sons, ages 13 and 10.
“I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin when I met a bunch of musicians who started Divahn, and I got more deeply into Middle Eastern music. The plan was to pursue an academic career with music on the side, but the music took over a little bit. I would go back and forth between being a musician and being an academic.”
After moving to New York, Dardashti served as an associate professor of Jewish music at the Jewish Theological Seminary and was the recipient of musical grants. One was for a project called “The Naming,” which featured songs that represented women in the Middle East.
“In all of my work, the unifying strand is broadening the concept of Jewishness, Jewish music and Jewish practice,” Dardashti said in echoing the intent of Global Voices. “North America is predominantly Ashkenazi in Jewish practice, so people’s understanding of Judaism is very Western. An important goal in the public work I do is to broaden people’s understanding of what Jewishness sounds like.”
COURTESY OF GALEET DARDASHTI
Details
Global Voices Weekend runs Friday-Saturday, Aug. 27-28, on the grounds of Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township, where there will be a tent. Except for a possible catered lunch ($12) for the Saturday program, the events — 7 p.m. Friday, 1 and 7 p.m. Saturday — are free and open to the community. They also will be livestreamed. To order lunch, RSVP to nfortier@comcast.net. To stream, go to tbelive.org. (248) 851-1100. tbeonline.org.
