Jews and Blacks Join in This 'Yizkor'

[question everything]

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Jews and Blacks Join in This 'Yizkor'
By NAT HENTOFF
The Wall St. Journal


Years ago, the bassist-composer Charles Mingus and I were talking about the first time music penetrated so deeply into us that we knew we could never be without it. "As a child," Mingus told me, "my stepmother would take me to a Holiness Church. The blues were in the Holiness churches -- moaning and riffs between the audience and the preacher. People went into trances."

I told him about sitting next to my father in an Orthodox synagogue when I was a child as the hazzan, or cantor, in his black robes and high black skullcap took over the service. As I wrote in my memoir, "Boston Boy" (Knopf/Paul Dry Books paperback): "What he sings is partly written, largely improvised. He is a master of melisma -- for each sacred syllable, there are three, four, six notes that climb and dramatically entwine with the cry, the krechts (a catch in the voice)" that I was later to hear in black blues singers. There were moments when I wanted to rise and shout, but I did not want to embarrass my father.


There is now a recording, "Yizkor: Music of Memory" by David Chevan and the Afro-Semitic Experience (www.chevan.addr.com) -- original, resonantly melodic jazz settings of Jewish prayers and psalms -- that Mingus and I, if he were still here, could rise and share. The hazzan here, often improvising with the soul-stretching intensity of John Coltrane, is the internationally renowned Alberto Mizrahi, described by the BBC as "riding the notes the Jewish Pavarotti." Now in its 11th year, the Afro-Semitic Experience was formed by composer and bassist David Chevan, a practicing scholar of jazz and Jewish music. The group has performed around this country, largely at colleges, synagogues and churches, and in Europe.

Its players, transcending categories, are Mr. Chevan (a bassist who holds a doctorate in musicology); Baba David Coleman (an African drummer and drum builder, and a Yoruban priest); Will Bartlett (woodwinds, conductor of jazz saxophone and klezmer workshops); Babafemi Alvin Carter (Afro-Cuban and West African percussion and Klezmer drummer); Warren Byrd (pianist, composer and teacher of gospel arranging); and Stacy Phillips (steel guitarist, violinist and author of the first book to accurately transcribe early klezmer music). With Hazzan Mizrahi, they bring us into the twilight world of "Yizkor," the Jewish equivalent of a requiem Mass -- psalms and prayers, says Mr. Chevan, "that have been recited since the time of the Crusades." The Yizkor service is observed at Yom Kippur (the holiest day of the Jewish year) and at three other times.
Tune In



The accompanying booklet contains the original texts and translations, beginning with "Adonai, Mah Adam" ("My God, what is man that you recognize him?" -- which brought to mind Duke Ellington's teleological question, "What Am I Here For?") The deeply searching melodies and the heart-beating rhythms made me remember the title of Elie Wiesel's book on Hasidic Masters, "Souls on Fire" (Random House). I've been in Hasidic synagogues where prayers are continually lifted by music, but never before have I heard this lyrically powerful a fusion of Jewish and jazz souls on fire.

(snip)



Mr. Hentoff writes about jazz for the Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122333214390709253.html (subscription, I think)