48 | AUGUST 19 • 2021

W

hen Jewish sing-
er-scholar Galeet
Dardashti devel-
oped a live performance that
included the digital presence
of her late and famed grand-
father, Persian classical singer
Yona Dardashti, she thought
the setup was very original.
Soon, however, audience
members started telling her
about similar setups featuring
the late and famed secular
singer Natalie Cole, recog-
nized for appearing live and
augmented with a digital pres-
ence by her late dad, singer-pi-
anist Nat King Cole.
While the Coles especially
were noted for the New World
approach to the enduring
standard “Unforgettable,” writ-
ten by Jewish composer Irving
Gordon, Dardashti hopes that
her many original programs
— mixing Jewish-Persian
liturgy and music — will be
unforgettable as presented
Aug. 27-28 at Temple Beth El
in Bloomfield Township.
Cantor Rachel Gottlieb
Kalmowitz, central to inviting
Dardashti to appear at the
temple’s annual Global Voices
Weekend, has announced
three separate presentations:
Global Voices Summer

Shabbat on Friday evening,
Nosh and Knowledge on
Saturday afternoon and
“Monajat,” a reimagining of
the Selichot ritual, on Saturday
evening.
“With our Global Voices
series, we are choosing to

bring Jewish musicians from
many different backgrounds
to share their particular genres
of Jewish music,” Kalmowitz
said. “We began with the
bluegrass and old-time music
influences of Nefesh Mountain
followed by Israeli superstar
David Broza, whose greatest
influences are rock ’n’ roll and
Spanish guitar.”
Dardashti will appear in the
first in-person Global Voices
Weekend with an emphasis on
Sephardic and Mizrahi music.
“These will be the first pub-
lic performances I’m doing
since the pandemic so it’s a

very exciting weekend for me,”
said Dardashti, who is based
in New York, serves as cantor
and musician-in-residence at
the Jewish Community Project
Downtown in Manhattan and
has been performing since
age 3.

Her introduction to the stage
came with being part of a fam-
ily group headed by her father,
Cantor Farid Dardashti, and
folksinging mother, Sheila. She
led High Holiday services last
year but was only with the rabbi
and the musicians as services
were streamed.

A SPECIAL WEEKEND
Dardashti, who will be leading
Shabbat services on Friday
night in collaboration with
the Temple Beth El clergy,
will speak about herself and
her journey as both musician
and scholar performing and

discussing Middle Eastern
Jewish music. Although born
and raised in the United States,
she has been influenced by her
Middle Eastern heritage.
On Saturday afternoon,
Dardashti will be teaching a
class on Sephardi poetic songs
(piyutim) and will delve into
the way these musical poet-
ic traditions have evolved
throughout Jewish history and
came to have important mean-
ing for Israeli pop music over
the last 20 years.
The Saturday night program,
including four New York jazz
musicians who join in vocals,
will feature “Monajat,” which
means an intimate dialog with
the Divine. The piece, honor-
ing her grandfather, was creat-
ed many years ago as commis-
sioned by the Foundation for
Jewish Culture.
Accompanying the sing-
er-scholar will be Dafer Tawil
(percussion, ney, violin),
Shanir Blumenkranz (acoustic
bass, oud), Philip Mayer (per-
cussion, electronics) and Max
ZT (hammered dulcimer).
“I probably will be doing
‘Monajat’ in a slightly differ-
ent way for the Temple Beth
El performance because I
am reworking it now for a
recording and revisiting a lot
of the music,” said Dardashti,
who holds a Ph.D. in cultural
anthropology and has enter-
tained in Michigan with her
group, Divahn, a female quar-
tet that presents traditional
Middle Eastern music with
contemporary arrangements.
“I’m recording this proj-
ect with a big grant from the
Borns Jewish Studies Program
at Indiana University and the
Memorial Foundation for
Jewish Culture. I’m looking at
the piece with a new lens and
insights into my grandfather
that I didn’t have before I start-
ed working on a documentary
film about him with my sister,
Danielle.”

Jewish-Persian singer Galeet Dardashti will perform at
Temple Beth El’s Global Voices, Aug. 27-28.
Exotic Songs

“AN IMPORTANT GOAL IS
TO BROADEN PEOPLE’S
UNDERSTANDING OF
WHAT JEWISHNESS
SOUNDS LIKE.”

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

of the Jewish Mideast

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