“Mughaniyat: The Songs of the Mothers”

By Arlene Stolnitz

Tom Fogel is a folklorist and ethnographer at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His interest in Yemeni Jewish culture has led him to explore the poetry of Yemenite Jewish women from a bygone era. His collaboration with Israeli musician, Ofer Kalaf, has resulted in “Mughaniyat: The Songs of the Mothers,” music from the Khugarya region of Yemen. Mugahniyat were Yemenite poetesses who also sang. The poetry comes from the Cairo Geniza, a repository of Jewish manuscript fragments from the countries of North Africa bordering the Mediterranean.

While researching the work of the late Shelomo Dov Goitein, a scholar of Yemenite Jewish culture, Fogel became interested in the culture of that period, which stems from the 9th through the 13th centuries. Turns out his family came from southwestern Yemen, as did Kalaf’s family! Together with Kalaf, an accomplished musician and thespian, the musical composition “Mughaniyat” was born.

To understand this music, one must know something about the history of the region. Jews of that time in Yemen numbered nearly 50,000 among millions of Yemenite Muslims. Theirs was an amicable arrangement, even though the Jews were considered subjects rather than equal in status. The tradition was that for nearly half a year, the workers in local villages would leave to work and sell their products in distant Muslim towns. Yemeni women and children were left on their own, under the “protection” of the town leaders.

Left to take care of their own affairs, women did all of the customary work for themselves. Harvesting wheat, bread baking, bringing water to the village and doing needlework were all accomplished by women as they sang to each other. The women were illiterate, never having learned to read or write Hebrew. Therefore, the songs were all in YemeniteArabic, rather than Hebrew.

The songs of the women were passed down in the oral tradition, generation after generation. None had ever been written down until now. The songs reflect the girls’ hardship and longings. Often, they were married off as young as age 6 to older men. Their matrimony songs, unlike the joyful Israeli celebrations we are familiar with, are sad and tearful. The practice has continued even in more recent times, and Kalaf (sometimes spelled Callaf), never knew that his mother, orphaned at an early age, was married to his father through such an arrangement.

I found Yemenite songs performed by Kalaf with English titles while searching on YouTube. “I Think,” “Personal Problems,” “ Breaking My Eyes” and “Untangled Child” are worth listening to, although I do not know if they are specifi cally from the “Mothers” composition. However, the music gives us an interesting insight into Yemenite music and makes for enjoyable listening.

The musical arrangement, “Songs of the Mothers,” was presented recently by Fogel and Kalaf at Confederation House, a long-standing center for ethnic music and poetry in Jerusalem. The center, founded in 1984, emphasizes innovative activities based on cultural identification, social issues and questions of identity.

In the words of the composers, “nonYemenite people know we have a culture, and they respect that. They may know very little about it, but at least we are on the radar … On another level, it is not so great, because we lost a lot of our heritage. This performance honors that legacy as well as our mothers.”

Arlene Stolnitz, founder of the Sarasota Jewish Chorale, is a member of the Jewish Congregation of Venice. A retired educator from Rochester, New York, she has sung in choral groups for over 25 years and also sings in The Venice Chorale. Her interest in the preservation of Jewish music of all kinds has led to this series of articles on Jewish Folk Music in the Diaspora. Arlene Stolnitz