Michel Klein with Ellen Koskoff
Performing Chassidishkeit: Spirituality and Identity in Chabad niggunim
In the Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidic community, the singing of religious folksongs called nigunim holds a fundamental place in one’s life. For a people whose spiritual and physical lives are oftentimes intimately intertwined, nigunim are vital tools with which to tap into that spirituality and uplift the physical. Klein’s research examines the ways in which musical syntax, spiritual motifs, and ritual performance work in conjunction to help Lubavitchers construct an identity through the performance of nigunim. This musical-spiritual performance of identity gives Lubavitchers a feeling of chassidishkeit: a sense of communal belonging and the inspiration to embark on their own individual spiritual path.
Please note that this session is a re-broadcast from the Jewish Music Forum, but Dr Klein and Professor Koskoff will be present for questions and discussion at this COZ broadcast
Dr. Michel Klein is a composer and scholar of Jewish music specializing in Chabad Chasidic nigunim. He received his Ph.D in composition and ethnomusicology from UCLA where he studied composition with David Lefkowitz, Ricard Danielpour, and Ian Krouse and ethnomusicology with Mark Kligman. He has studied Jewish religious texts and Chabad mysticism at the Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, as well as at Tiferes Bachurim in Morristown, NJ. In his music, Michel seeks to tap into and express his Jewish roots by fusing various elements of contemporary music and traditional Jewish sacred musical material. Michel currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children where he heads the music and enrichment program for a private Jewish day school.
Ellen Koskoff (Professor Emerita, Eastman School of Music) is the author of Music in Lubavitcher Life, 2000, winner of ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music Scholarship 2001, and A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender, 2014. She is the editor ofthe Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 3: United States and Canada, editor of Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective and Ethnomusicology Advisor for The New Amerigroves. Other publications include articles in Ethnomusicology, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and The Journal of Women and Music. Koskoff has also served as the President of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2001-2003), among other offices. She is the general editor of the Eastman/Rochester Studies in Ethnomusicology and is currently writing a book on Balinese cremation music.