Of Poets And Playlists
An interview with poet Jake Marmer, the all-new Ingathering playlist, and more
Hello and welcome to the Ingathering! This week, we’re introducing a new playlist, which includes most of the great music featured in the series; an interview with poet, performer, and creative personality, Jake Marmer; hype about our upcoming premium content; and more.
The Infinite Playlist
Ok, it’s not really infinite, but each week I’ll be adding new music from the artists featured in the Ingathering. The playlist already has 38 videos—ranging from deep album cuts, live clips, and single songs, to full concerts—and that list will keep growing. Go here to check out the playlist, and while you’re at it, subscribe to our YouTube page. There’s not much there yet, but as the Ingathering grows, that’s where we’ll be posting some of our exciting new content, and you don’t want to miss out.
Reaching Across Languages: Poet Jake Marmer talks about collaborating with Jewish musicians
Jake Marmer is a poet. He often collaborates with musicians, and his poetry—at least some of it—is an attempt to capture the spiritual highs he’s experienced while singing nigunim (wordless Hasidic melodies). “You’re in a certain state, like an altered mental state,” he says, reflecting on those times he was lost in Hasidic song. “I was thinking, ‘How do I approach that state or evoke that state through a poem? How do I go in there?’”
Marmer’s poetry is inseparable from his Jewish journey, and his collaborators include prominent Jewish musicians like Greg Wall and Frank London (Hasidic New Wave, Klezmatics, and many other projects), and more recently, Joshua Horowitz (Veretski Pass), and John Schott. He’s released a number of albums as well, including, Hermeneutic Stomp, which is a musical rendering of his book, Jazz Talmud, and Purple Tentacles of Thought and Desire.
Check out this excerpt from our full interview, which you can read here.
As a poet, you draw inspiration from nigunim. What is the link between poetry and nigunim, especially since nigunim, specifically, are wordless?
That’s an interesting question. When I started getting deeper into poetry—or when I started thinking of myself as a poet—I loved going to see performance poetry gigs in New York, like the slam poetry scene. To me, the alive-ness of poetry—poetry that’s not just on the page or is not just read—but is read in a musical way, where music is in the backdrop of it, or you’re half-talking/half-singing it. That was a very powerful idea. In my research, looking for inspiration and exploring poets that I’ve loved, I started seeing how performance poetry in the late 1950s and early ‘60s was entangled with music, specifically with jazz. There was a sense that this music lends itself to a connection to poetry. Those poets, the Beat poets specifically, really were interested in music. They were drawing inspiration from music, and trying to find something that poetry lacked in music. The big question in poetry since the middle of the 20th century is the question of form. Once people stopped writing sonnets and ballads and said that the form could be anything—it’s not completely free in that you’re still the one in control of it—but what is the shape of the poem? Is the shape of my free verse different from your free verse? What form is it going to take? These external forms—forms that are not necessarily associated with poetry but are life forms, discourse forms—start to make their way in. Music became like an inspiration or like a resource for people.
In my own seeking out of forms, I was thinking of quintessential Jewish experiences or Jewish forms of being—or doing something profound—and nigunim were incredible to me. My wife, she grew up Chabad, and when we would go visit my in-laws and hang at their Shabbos table and sing these gorgeous nigunim, I would be completely struck. I thought, “Holy Moly, this stuff is so powerful.” You’re in a certain state, like an altered mental state. I was thinking, “How do I approach that state or evoke that state through a poem? How do I go in there?”
That state that you’re talking about, that was just from the Shabbos table, not a Farbrengen with thousands of people?
I didn’t go to Farbrengens with thousands of people, although I’ve been to some hardcore stuff in [the religious community of] Monsey, New York, too. It was specifically the Chabad nigunim I heard at my in-laws. They’re complicated structurally, at least a little more complicated and more brooding and dark, they’re not happy go lucky. You go through something as you go through it and come out on the other side. It feels like a sense of narrative—maybe not narrative—but something happening from point A to point B, and that felt beautiful and powerful.
It sounds like you’re interested in more than just the form, but the vibe or spirit of it. Is that what you were looking for?
The vibe and the spirit, exactly, the mood of it. Maybe that is what form is as well. You could say form is a certain number of syllables or line length or whatever. Bebop is a style or form, but there is also content that is intrinsic to that form.
Although bebop is comparatively rigid. You mentioned that the Beatniks were interested in jazz, but jazz evolved from the time of the Beats. By the1960s, jazz had gone from something fixed, like bebop, to the free improvisations of artists like Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler.
True. Ayler is an interesting example. If you think about the form of Ayler, “What is the form?” The departure from the form is so vast, but you have the shadow of the form or an idea of what the form is, and those forms are really interesting. That’s when you have a sense of it, or an aspiration of that form, but it’s not that rigid.
With Ayler, the form is much more subtle, it’s implied and is emotionally felt as opposed to being played as fixed structures.
Exactly, and the fact that it’s implied—the content of it—does things to your imagination that are so powerful. Ayler’s titles as well, like “Spirits,” you feel it. Some kind of content is being communicated to you through music, or as you say, music without words, this instrumental music, and that content. It’s the profoundest thing there is, or the closest, I think, one can get to spiritual language. To me, being a poet and a seeker of such experiences, that’s where it’s at. This is where I go for those experiences. I want to translate that into language, and I want to see if I can play it through my words.
Go here to read the full conversation with Jake Marmer.
Coming Next Week: An Interview With Uri Brauner Kinrot From The Bands Boom Pam And Ouzo Bazooka
Don’t miss our incredible interview coming next week with producer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, Uri Brauner Kinrot. We talk about his world psych band, Ouzo Bazooka, the story behind Boom Pam, his work with artists like Liraz and Balkan Beat Box, and much more.
Premium Content Is Coming!
In addition to the incredible interviews you receive every week, starting in January, we’re going to offer a special paid tier. The paid tier does not replace the great content you already receive, it gives you even more.
Specifically, paid subscribers get:
Incredible curated playlists. These playlists include more than just artists featured in the Ingathering, but also things I stumble upon in my research, and amazing things I need to share. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’re someone who needs to hear it.
Deep, probing essays about the spiritual nature of music, with sources! I’ve been working on this content for a while, and it is powerful stuff. It offers a uniquely Jewish take on music and spirituality. Not to be missed.
Audio! Podcasts featuring my thoughts, experiences, and insights—but for insiders only.
The opportunity to support the Ingathering. The Ingathering is fun to produce, but it takes a lot of effort and time to research and write. A paid subscription is an amazing way to show your support.
If you don’t want to be a paid subscriber, that’s not a problem. Stay a free subscriber and keep enjoying the great content you already receive.
From The Archives: #ICYMI: Bring The Noise
Trombonist Dan Blacksberg talks about his über-heavy Jewish bands Deveykus and Electric Simcha, exploring traditional Jewish styles, and what playing Jewish music says about Jewish identity.
How can I support the Ingathering?
Great question! Although we are offering a paid tier starting in January, for now, the Ingathering is completely free. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy, or free, to produce. If the spirit moves you—and why wouldn’t it?—go here and make a donation. The Ingatheringis a project of Vechulai—a registered 501(c)3 tax exempt organization—which means that your contribution is tax deductible. Give ‘til it hurts!