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Global Flavor

Detroit Festival of the Arts features eclectic lineup
of performing and visual arts.

SUZANNE CHESSLER

Special to the Jewish News

IED

haraoh's Daughter, a band that
fuses world music into new
songs, brings Jewish sounds to
the 19th annual Detroit Festival of the
Arts. The group, organized by New
Yorker Basya Schechter, combines
Jewish religious and spiritual music with
melodic traditions popular in the
Middle East, Central Africa and Greece.
The folk-rock ensemble has been
scheduled in the middle of the week-
end event, which runs Friday-Sunday,
June 10-12, in Detroit's cultural cen-
ter. Pharoah's Daughter will appear
7:30 p.m. Saturday on the Wayne
State/WDET Stage in the midst of all
kinds of music, street theater, dance,
poetry readings, an artists' market,
children's activities and food stations.
There will be more than 100 free per-
formances on 10 stages throughout the
festival presented by Marshall Field's and
produced by the University Cultural
Association and Wayne State University.
"The style of Pharaoh's Daughter
developed from my travels," Schechter
told the Jewish News two years ago, when
she was booked for a performance at
Congregation Beth Shalom in Oak Park.
"I did a lot of hitchhiking and met
people who were local musicians. I
spent a lot of time absorbing their folk
music and learning their songs and
instruments. I heard the music in the
streets and marketplaces, and it really
got inside me."
Schechter, raised in an Orthodox
home where she heard Chasidic and
Israeli music, began listening to pop
styles as a teen. She started playing gui-
tar while studying English literature at
Barnard College, soon began compos-
ing and finding people to perform with
her and entered the renewal movement.
Named after Pharaoh's daughter, she
gave that name to her band. Basya
means daughter of God.
Some of Schechter's lyrics recall pas-
sages from Jewish texts while others
are strictly secular. She has recorded
three albums with Pharaoh's Daughter
and one instrumental exploration with
a Persian santur player.
Last summer, the band, with chang-
ing musicians, had a special perform-

cs.wirA

ance closer to home. They were in
Central Park's Summer Stage series in
New York. This year, in Detroit, they
are among many entertainers from dis-
tant locations, including Grammy-win-
ning blues artist Delbert McClinton,
Zydeco star C.J. Chenier & the Red
Hot Louisiana Band, jazz vocal legend
Jimmy Scott and Yerba Buena, an
Afro-Latin world-beat ensemble front-
ed by Venezuelan native Andres Levin.
In contrast, the Literary Arts Festival
will have writers from around the
world presenting their works. For the
first time in Michigan, Mexico's
Voladores de Papantia will perform
their ritual aerial dance on top of a 75-
foot pole. California's World Sand
Sculpture

Basya Schechter of Pharoah's
Daughter: The Chasidic filk-rock
ensemble performs 7:30 p.m.
Saturday June 11, on the Wayne
State/WDET stage.

Championship team returns to create a
sculpture on Kirby Street.
Free shuttles from Detroit's Comerica
Park to the festival will be available 7
a.m.-11:30 p.m. June 11. The park is
the site of the annual Susan G. Komen
Race for the Cure, an event to raise
funds to fight breast cancer.

❑

The Detroit Festival of the Arts
offers free entertainment Friday-
Sunday, June 10-12, in Detroit's
Cultural Center. Hours are 4-11
p.m. Friday, noon-11 p.m.
Saturday and noon-9 p.m.
Sunday. (313) 577-5088 or
www.detroitfestival.com .

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