Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Hasidic Music
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Hasidic Music
Ethnomusicologist Gordon Dale talks about the evolution of Hasidic music, its connection to deep mystical teachings, and the oversized influence of the dance parties in Uman
Hasidic music has been around since the dawn of the Hasidic movement, which started with the Baal Shem Tov (Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer) in the mid-1700s. Music was central to the Baal Shem Tov’s spiritual approach, and as the Hasidic movement grew, Hasidic music—both in terms of its diversity and influence—grew as well. Many Hasidic rebbes composed original nigunim—a nigun (plural: nigunim), is usually a wordless vocal melody—and some Hasidic groups also had court composers. Hasidic music has had a huge influence on Jewish music and culture, and can be found in everything from Jewish folk songs, liturgical melodies, and wedding music, to orthodox, or Haredi, pop.
To get a better understanding of Hasidic music, its history, idiosyncrasies, and influence, I spoke with Dr. Gordon Dale, a professor of ethnomusicology at Hebrew Union College in New York.
“I grew up not so far from Kiryas Joel,” Dale says about the Satmar community near his hometown of Warwick in upstate New York. “The synagogue that I grew up going to was easy walking distance to there—like right next to it. I would always see this community. I was fascinated, and I thought, ‘Who are these people? What are they doing?’ Their lives were right next to mine but it seemed so far away.”
That interest stayed with Dale throughout college, and eventually culminated in doctoral studies at the Graduate Center at CUNY. He also moved to Brooklyn, regularly attended services and musical gatherings at the Modzitz Hasidic community’s synagogue, and developed a strong relationship with Rabbi Ben Zion Shenker, arguably the most significant composer of nigunim in recent years (Shenker died in 2016).
“Rabbi Shenker and I were very close,” Dale says. “I had the privilege of helping him with some of his projects in the last few years of his life. He was very proficient in notation. He could sight read anything, and he could notate all his own music. When he would write a piece of music, he would notate it, spend time with it, and edit it. When he felt it was done, he would put it into a binder. He ended up with seven binders totaling 446 nigunim. We are hoping to publish them.”
In addition to discussing the history of Hasidic music, Dale and I also talked about music theory as interpreted through a spiritual lens, the first recordings of Hasidic music, Hasidic music’s evolution and embrace of modernity, and how the recent popularity of traveling to Uman, in the Ukraine, for Rosh Hashanah, has transformed that pilgrimage into a type of Hasidic Coachella.
What do people mean when they talk about the music of Hasidim as opposed to say, what we would today call klezmer?
Anytime you try to put boundaries around a genre of music, it’s going to get messy, and the peripheries are always blurry. But that said, klezmer usually refers to music that was largely played by itinerant musicians in Eastern Europe. They were playing at different simchas, which were happy occasions, like weddings, and the style of music they played was often for the occasion. It was for dancing—it was creating different moods—and dance was a big part of that. Hasidic music did have an impact on what they were doing. There were certainly overlaps—and some of those musicians were definitely hasidim—but I would say that hasidic music, or the music of hasidim, is broader. That’s because hasidim also play music at many different sorts of occasions. They have melodies that are sung around the shabbos table, and a tisch, where the rebbe is at the head of the table and creating these ecstatic singing occasions. And then, post-World War II, you have a whole genre of hasidic popular music, and that creates its own thing. When we talk about the music of hasidim, we’re talking about many different settings where the music can be performed.
Does Hasidic music tend to be more vocal, whereas klezmer is usually instrumental music?
Often that’s the case. One hundred years ago, microphones and amplification weren’t such a thing. At celebrations, you might have singers, but the instruments were primarily carrying the music.
I assume Hasidic music started with the dawn of Hasidism. Is that true, can certain melodies be traced back to the time of the movement’s founder, the Baal Shem Tov?
It’s a little bit tricky. The Baal Shem Tov lived from roughly 1698 until 1760, and whenever we talk about his life, it gets very tricky to parse fact and fiction. There have been scholars who try and do that—with some interesting conclusions, looking at Polish tax records for examples and finding references to him—so he very much was a real person. We know that, and we know certain things about his life that are very interesting. There are a lot of stories about him using music in his style of worship that he was advocating. I don’t mean worship just in terms of praying three times a day, I mean in everything that he did with his life. Many of his students, and their students, talked about his attachment to music—that he would always sing before teaching Torah, for example—and that he considered music to be a very important part of divine service. But again, it’s very difficult to know, because the Baal Shem Tov himself didn’t write anything. Everything was written by his students afterwards, although we do have a lot of quotes from early Hasidim about the importance of music in Hasidic life.
Do any specific nigunim date back to those days?
Someone put out a record about 10 years ago, which they claim are melodies from the Baal Shem Tov, but it is very hard to know. As I said, when we talk about the history of the Baal Shem Tov, we have minimal information about what his actual life was like. Everything comes from his students. An interesting thing is that his disciple, the Maggid of Mezeritch (Dov Ber ben Avraham) was very much responsible for spreading the movement, as well as the early tzadikim, too, and as Hasidism spread across Europe, the music took on different character as well. Even today, people will say, for example, “That sounds like a Chabad nigun, or that sounds like a Modzitz nigun.” Largely what they are referring to are the different styles of folk music that the people played in those geographic regions. Some Russian, some Polish, or whatever it is.
Are you saying that as the Hasidic movement grew, different musical schools developed that sounded similar to local folk styles?
Somewhat. It happened in the geographic realm, but on a smaller level as well, each Hasidic dynasty had court composers. They had people within their community who wrote nigunim, and just like any musician, each individual had his style. They had what they liked to do, which gave shape to the music cannon of each group. The rebbes themselves were composers, too, in Modzitz Hasidic dynasty, for example, that was always the case, although we’ve lost most of the compositions of the early rebbes over time. As the music for each Hasidic group was developing, not only did it give them a musical repertoire that they would sing at their functions, but it also gave the community an inheritance that they passed down through the generations. It becomes part of the identity of the group. It is their nigunim. Within each Hasidic group, you always find people who are fanatics about the music. They know all the pieces, collect it, and have it. Each group has its identity, and music shapes that.
I read a famous essay by the Modzitzer Rebbe (Divrei Yisrael, Parshas Miketz) about climbing seven levels before arriving at the eighth—which is the same, yet also a different level, as the first—and that is based on an understanding of the seven-note scale. My problem is that a seven-note scale is based on a Western understanding of music, which isn’t true for Jews from other parts of the world. The Hasidic movement developed parallel to the classical and romantic periods in classical music, how much is borrowed from that subjective understanding of how music works?
I should preface by saying that I am not going to contradict the Torah of someone like the author of the Divrei Yisrael (Rebbe Yisrael Taub), who was a genius. I am like an ant compared to a giant when it comes those matters. But as a musicologist, that I can talk about. When I first heard that idea about seven levels, I thought to myself that that was a very Ashkenazi understanding. It’s great, but it is very Ashkenazi-sounding, because other people wouldn’t parse the octave in seven pieces. But having said that, there are two other things:
First, you mentioned classical music, and how much does classical music factor in. I would include folk music into how that influences people as well. I think it shapes the soundscape of Hasidism, simply because it was in the air. These Hasidic groups were not as isolated as they are often imagined to be. Hasidim were often in cities with train stations—in or adjacent to major cities—and they had contact with people who were engaging in all sorts of musical activities. It makes sense that those musics are going to come through in the compositions and songs that they were writing. That isn’t anything that needs to be seen as embarrassing in the historiography of Hasidism. People like to think of musical genres as sui generis, that they completely stand on their own and came out of nothing, but that’s not how music works. Music is constantly developing, and it is wonderful to think of something creative that someone does, which is based on something he experienced. I don’t see that as problematic for the way that the Orthodox world wants to understand Hasidic music history.
The second point is about music theory and Hasidism. There have been writings about music theory from the perspective of Hasidic philosophy. I think if we reframe that idea of the scale, what the scale represents, and what is an octave, and instead of thinking of it as an explanation, also think of it as music theory. Think of how people conceptualize of what an octave is, how they think about what musical phrases are, and what does it mean to structure music in certain ways. For example, Chabad has a concept in music, which is based on the Hasidic philosophy of ratza v’shov (רצה ושוב)—ebb and flow, or going and returning. In Hasidic thought, that is an idea of the soul’s assent and descent as it is striving for Godliness, but is also constantly returning to the physical world. In nigunim, that is represented through the arc of musical phrases, and the resting points they find within the phrase. An Israeli scholar, Raffi Ben Moshe, wrote a book about this, and you see it in other Hasidic groups as well. If you think about musical phrases as representative of—or almost embodying—the ways that a person’s soul functions in the world, that is a culturally informed way of looking at music theory.
Would the Divrei Yisrael fall into that category of music theory from a spiritual perspective?
I think you could read it that way. I don’t know if he would have characterized it as such, but I am happy to read it that way and say that that is a way to understand how music works in Hasidic philosophy.
You mentioned that a lot of the earlier music is lost. Is that because of the Holocaust or other things?
It is a few things, and the Holocaust was part of it. The other thing is that music in Hasidic life has often been an oral tradition, and the nature of oral traditions is that they often get lost. All of that changed at the time of the Holocaust. In Modzitz, for example, the author of the Imrei Shaul (Rebbe Shaul Yedidya Elazar Taub), who was the rebbe at the time, made the decision to start writing the music down. He found people who were competent enough in music transcription, and had them transcribe the repertoire. Those transcriptions are called the “Vilna Notes.” After World War II, in the 1950s, Ben Zion Shenker was the first one to record an album of Hasidic music. After that, other Hasidim started recording the nigunim of their Hasidic groups. Today, we have many recordings of the repertoires, and that’s been an important preservation tactic since the War.
Are those recordings produced with Western production aesthetics and arrangements, or are they just of people singing?
They are produced records. There was someone named Benedict Stambler, and he had a record label called, Collector’s Guild, which he ran with his wife, Helen. They came to Ben Zion—because Benedict and his friends used to often eat the Shabbos Third Meal at the Modzitz synagogue in Brooklyn—and said, “You should make a record.” At the time, Ben Zion thought, “Me? Make a record? I wouldn’t even know how to get started with that.” They said, “We do.” The idea stuck with him. Eventually, he gave in and asked the Rebbe, who gave him permission to do it. It was a fundraiser. Ben Zion told me he never made a dime off the Modzitz recordings he recorded throughout his life, everything went back to the Hasidic group. In a sense, these songs are considered to be property of the Hasidic group, which goes back to what I was saying before, in that it creates a group identity, an inheritance within the group.
Many nigunim are Russian marches and beer drinking songs, what is the philosophy behind that?
Ellen Koskoff, a Professor Emerita of Ethnomusicology at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, writes about this. It happens in some Hasidic groups, but particularly in Chabad it is a big thing and considered to be a spiritual tikkun (fixing). That’s the word they use, they call it a musical tikkun. There are many stories in Chabad of a holy person—like one of the rebbes—who hears a nigun, or a melody sung by non-Jews in their surrounding environment, finds a holy spark in that melody, and decides that in order to release the holiness that is found in the melody, to acquire the nigun. After the nigun is acquired, the person who sang it originally forgets the melody.
The rebbe will ask a non-Jewish person to sing a melody, learn it, and then the non-Jewish person will forget it?
He’ll pay the non-Jewish person for it. It has to be a kinyan (an acquisition), he has to actually acquire the melody. After the rebbe has the melody—has learned it and memorized it—he’ll say to the person, “Can you sing it again for me?” And all of a sudden, the person has forgotten the melody completely. The rebbe, at that point, according to their philosophy, has unleashed the holy spark that’s in that music, and now it becomes part of the Chabad repertoire. It is now part of their cannon, and the rebbe has done the spiritual work of releasing more Godliness into the world because of that.
How far does this go? A few years ago there was a game where you had to guess if a song was K-pop or from the Hasidic community. How did it get to that point?
In the 1950s, they started recording nigunim. It wasn’t such a far stretch at that point to start recording other music that sounded more like the popular music of the day. As far as I know, the first person to be successful doing that was Mordechai Ben David.
That’s pretty recent.
His first recordings came out in the ‘70s. The music was very successful, those musicians found an audience, the music continued to develop, and just like all music, it took on the sounds of the surrounding environment. There were a few things that have changed the music significantly in recent years. The first, and most obvious one, is the internet. With the internet—even though certain pockets of Hasidic society try to avoid the internet, or insist on internet filters—in any event, it is clear that the internet has opened up the society in lots of ways. Another thing, although I haven’t researched it extensively yet—a friend who grew up in the Satmar community suggested this to me, and I suspect that he’s on the right track—is that a lot of people have started going to Uman for Rosh Hashanah. Uman is becoming a place where musical trends are being disseminated in significant ways. These parties that they have there—and you can watch videos of them—you see all of these hasidic men, and the sounds that are happening are the sounds of Electronic Pop Music. One of things that’s striking for people who aren’t familiar with orthodox society is that, while Hasidic women and girls also make music in their own spaces, everything that I am talking about so far, I am talking about men. That is a distinction that should be made clear. Also, a lot of the people at Uman are Israeli, they go back to Israel and the music penetrates into the Israeli religious music industry. It comes to America as well. Today, there is a very rapid exchange happening between the Israeli music and the American music scenes, and there is a constant flow of new music.
What role does rhythm play in nigunim?
When talking about nigunim, there are several different styles that they can be performed in. Some pieces are considered to be marches, some are called waltzes, and are also free nigunim. Within the different genres, the meter and rhythmic conventions are different. For example, what are called Devaikus nigunim [slow, emotional, and contemplative melodies designed to help facilitate devaikus, or a feeling of connection, to God], those are often more free, and have sections that are very legato, or notes where you can put a fermata and hold them as long as you want. Certain sections are like that, but even within that same piece, it can go from that very free feel, to being very metric. Within the different genre types, you have different relationships to meter and rhythm, but even within one piece you can have both super-metric and super non-metric.
How about in terms of timbre, is there a specific aesthetic in terms of vocal quality?
Certainly in the recordings of nigunim, a cantorial, classical sounding voice seems to be the ideal. Ben Zion Shenker learned to sing by listening to recordings of the famous chazan (cantor), Yossele Rosenblatt. That was the ideal for him and for many other people. A lot of it is based on the ideals within the cantorial tradition, but having said that, that is not always the thing that is really prized. There are people who will fawn over recordings of a rebbe singing, even if that rebbe can’t carry a tune, because there is a spirituality that is supposed to be in the voice as well. That is an important component to all this that I should emphasize: the spiritual character of the musician is dialectically related to the spiritual quality of the music itself. Meaning, the musician who is considered to be a super holy person is going to create music that is similarly holy, however if a musician creates music that is seen as not as holy, socially, that will be looked at askance, or perhaps not as holy as they were assumed to be previously.
Do people say they can hear the holiness?
Yes they do.