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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