“In ancient traditional texts the ideal cantor is described as a modest, needy (nitsrach ve nizqaq) individual with a fine presence and fine voice. It is said he must be needy so that his personal troubles will make the prayer more moving and impressive, while at the same time he will give deeper expression to the sorrows of the assembled congretation.” Amnon Shiloah, Jewish Musical Traditions 88-89
“[Jewish Cantorial] revivalists have not yet:
Mined the revolutionary potential of cantorial music to constitute a diaspora consciousness that cuts across boundaries of identity in the internally diverse Jewish world
Embraced the utopian politic of cantorial records that framed religious and ethnic identity in opposition to hegemonic powers—religious music defined as “the voice of the people”
Framed cantorial performance as a foundational element in forming a Jewish culture of “Deep listening.”
–Jeremiah Lockwood, “Cantorial Diagrams”
My art practice is motivated by the longings and questions my scholarship raises: a quest for the lost experiences of the ancient world, from Mesopotamian magic to early Jewish prayer, but also for lost people—not just to recover information about them but to share who they were and how they felt. It is an attempt to gain and share a kind of immanent knowledge beyond facts. Because even if we could somehow recover every clay tablet or Dead Sea scroll, would they mean the same things to us as they did to them—how can we be sure we are not projecting our own expectations and feelings onto the long dead?
But our subjective feelings, in dialogue with attentive listening and physical presence, may actually be the most powerful and responsible way to connect with the past. In my work with music and Judaism exemplified by this project I want to bridge the gap between observer and participant. This happens regularly with memory, which can be created by merely observing media–artifacts or sounds–as well as people, and still form new experiences. While scholarship begins from causal questions—why did this event happen and what did it mean?—I want to cause events for people to remember and reflect on, to intervene in an area where I am usually a passive observer.
The history of Jewish liturgy has been written in two ways: A. Z. Idelsohn, founder of Jewish musicology, wanted to show it was essentially eternal, going back to the cantillation of the Torah itself. More recently, musicologists like Kay Kaufman Shelemay found it essentially ephemeral, absorbed from the dominant culture of the time. My intermedia work is an icon of the way it is irreducibly both: old memories built of new objects.
sethlsanders 