If you are an early riser, and are keen to hear, or participate in, authentic Jewish music, you could do no better than to find your local Sephardi synagogue and join their early morning session of piyyutim, or bakashot as they are more generally known today. It may mean you arriving at three o’clock in the morning and hanging out for four hours, until it is time for morning prayers, but in so doing you would have come across a part of a centuries old authentic, Jewish tradition.
It is difficult to know when exactly the tradition of piyyut – liturgical hymns – began. Scholars locate the earliest piyyutim in Talmudic times and thereafter they developed according to community and area, whether Babylon, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and so on. There were piyyut poems written in the Gaonic period (eighth to tenth centuries) and although they were certainly sung, the musical notations were never written down, so we have no idea how they sounded. There are some, isolated piyyutim, by Sa’adai Gaon (c. 882-942), for example, or Eleazar ben HaKalir, (c.570 -640) which were created before the Middle Ages (when most of the piyyuyim emerged). These were important rabbis who were capable of setting words to music – and they composed all sorts of music – even secular songs, love songs, drinking songs, songs in praise of the king, or of a particular rich person, and so forth. Each was composed according to strict rules of composition. But it is not until the 16th century, in the northern Israel town of Zefat, that we have actual musical renditions of these religious and mystical poems, as they were sung in synagogues by Sephardi communities during the winter months. Then they were called bakashot (or requests) a tradition that caught on and became widespread throughout the Oriental Jewish communities of Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and North Africa, as well as in the land of Israel.
Roni Ish-Ran, a paytanist and cantor of the tradition is the organizer of a festival of paytanim taking place in Jerusalem each year for the past eight years.
“There are many traditions of paytanut,” explains Ish-Ran, when we meet in his house-come-studio in central Jerusalem. “The truth is about 20 years ago I attended the Adas synagogue in Jerusalem where they kept up the tradition of singing piyyutim. When I looked around the synagogue and saw the elderly men singing bakashot I felt that when they died the tradition would die with them.
Ish-Ran was not totally convinced that this tradition was moribund. He recalls his own efforts to learn about these prayer-poems:
“When I learned them, there was no YouTube, CDs or records. For some years I had to rise at three in the winter mornings, and go to the synagogues in order to learn them. That was the only way you could absorb the bakashot.”
He relates how youngsters were introduced to this world, though it is obvious that he is drawing from his own experience:
“A young boy or eight or nine would go to the synagogue with his father and was given a simple solo to sing. If he was good he would be given more complex piyyutim. If he was very successful he could become a cantor and paytan.”
He adds: “To become a paytan meant you have to know Oriental musical scales or makamim. For every shabbat there is a special makam. You have to know how to improvise and to know when to change and when to repeat. There is a repertoire of some hundreds of different tunes.”
The custom grew to recite these sacred poems during the winter from Shabbat Bereshit (around October) and Shabbat Hagadol (around April). They would be sung at night time between Friday and Shabbat. The men would go into the synagogue at three in the morning and sing for four hours non-stop until 7:00 in the morning. Today these events take place in one of two ways. The Aleppo tradition from Syria is to sing the same tunes each week. They were apparently influenced by earlier Rabbis who composed payytanim at that time. In the Moroccan tradition by contrast the men sing different bakashot each sabbath.
The most recent festival presented seven concerts over four days. It focused on bakashot. The central performance of each evening was based on a tradition of one of the communities, beginning with the Moroccan tradition, going on to the Iraqi and Turkish style and ending with the Aleppo tradition. What made this festival special was that it included Israeli musicians who were not paytanim and didn’t know bakashot, but who were influenced by the texts and the music of bakashot and introduced these strops into their own music. These musicians included Shlomo Bar, who was born in Morocco and was influenced by the local Andalusian music, Yair Delal who plays oud and violin and whose influences include his Iraqi background, and Leah Shabbat who comes from a Turkish family. Each appeared in a unique program of their music. They performed and explained how they were influenced. They put on the first performances of the evening. Later on that same evening there was the central performance, according to the community being featured.
On the evening of Moroccan paytanim, for example, there appeared the greatest paytan of this generation – Rabbi Chaim Louk –- who has appeared before the king of Morocco, all around Europe and elsewhere. With him there appeared a young paytan who brought with him something new in the world of piyyut; an inter-generational connection. Rabbi Louk is 80 soon and yet he stills appears regularly This performance at the festival was more arranged. Not like in the synagogue. The last performance, of Allepo paytanim, was exactly as they sung them in the synagogue, without musical instruments. Some of the top paytanists were on the stage. Ish-Ran coordinated the evening.
“It was as alive as possible,” he recalls. “Which is to say that nobody knew which solo would be his! That is how it is done in the synagogue on the sabbath, at three in the morning. Of course, if you don’t know the piyyut, then they won’t give it to you. The person who gives out the paytan generally knows who knows. So it was like real bakashot in the synagogue. It was a little like a suspense film – who will sing next, which song will they take? That’s the nature of being a live performance.
“There is also the tradition from Babylon, very ancient, very deep, both the texts and the music. Very popular, folksy. Another innovation at the festival was that the Turkish tradition would be heard on stage for the first time ever. My parents came from south-east Turkey close to the Syrian border. They spoke Turkish at home and Arabic on the streets. My father from the age of six sat with his uncle and wrote down every piyyut that they sang in the family. Even though he didn’t understand the Hebrew he was able to write the songs down in Hebrew. These piyyutim are known only in our family. After 70 years in Israel we are showing them to the wider audience. The musicians were Turkish and Kurdish who sing both in Turkish and Hebrew. These songs were sung not only on shabbat. Every morning at three o’clock they would go to the synagogue and sing. They would read from the Zohar, and from the book of Psalms and sing. They move me greatly, and I hope they moved the audience. They are connected to a very specific area. “These bakashot are influenced musically by the Aleppo and Kurdish traditions. Today in Israel they don’t call these bakashot from Aleppo, but rather Jerusalemite. That shows you how the Jews of Aleppo became integrated into their new environment. They arrived in Israel at the beginning of the 20th century and they taught everyone their bakashot. Today, those who sing them are not necessarily from Syria, but rather from a number of Oriental Jewish communities.
“One of the rising stars of piyyutim among the Oriental communities is a young man in his early twenties from Ethiopia!
“About 20 years ago I had the privilege of putting on a performance of piyyutim for non-religious people. We called the group Tehillot Shorot (Singing Praises). People came together to learn and to sing these songs. We met in Emek Refaim in southern Jerusalem. The people were religious and secular, women as well as men, Ashkenazi and Mizrachim (Oriental). They came together to sing these piyyutim. We had four meeting each for Aleppo, Turkish, Iraqi etc. Today these groups appear throughout the country. The Hebrew University also became involved, taking secular Israeli singers rock and pop, and inviting them to come and meet once a week. ‘We want to show you a new world, the world of Judaism,’ we told them. We taught them the texts and the history of the music. A good number of these singers brought out discs of piyyutim: Ehud Banai, Meir Banai, Shem Tov Levy, Etti Ankari, Barry Saharov, Kobi Oz, and so forth.
“I was a part of the project, as a musician, cantor, and paytanist, but not the instigator. I set up a website of Arabic, Eastern, authentic music of ours with Jewish texts, something that had never been done before. Some 15 years ago, Beit Avichai in Jerusalem became the center for this type of music. It invested in all the activities of bringing the payytan music to the wider Israeli audience.”
Why though did this tradition suddenly re-emerge?
“There was a searching for roots in Israel, especially at the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties. Many Israelis traveled to India, Tibet and Turkey – they were looking for something that would be usable beyond the daily routine. They were searching for it outside Judaism, or Israel. Parallel to this process there were all sorts of happenings in the politics of the country in the late ‘nineties, peace treaties with Arab countries and so on. There was a growing appreciation of Arab culture. A number of musical groups were started – I was a member of one of them – that made fusion music of Eastern-Western style, jazz, Turkish and so on. The piyyut gave people something which was theirs. Just as there was a tradition of India or Tibet, there was also something of our own. It was a Jewish option. Not necessarily connected to religion. There are texts that lift you up, which is ours.”
Israelis began looking for their Judaism – everyone in their own way. Something that spoke to them. The world of paytan is one in which you can relate to it without putting on a kippa.
“Apart from all this, it is wonderful music. Moshe Habusha, who was a personal chazan to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, sang in the festival. He is considered a major singer of paytan in Arab countries as well as here, and not just among the Jews. He was invited to one of these countries for four days and they arranged, via Chabad, that he would have kosher food throughout his visit. They sat with him while he sang classical Arab music. He knows how to sing these songs in Arabic from 100 to a 150 years ago. Needless to say, he was a great hit.”
From being marginal, the piyyut has become part of the musical mainstream, adding to the rich store of Israel’s musical mosaic.