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ISEF Doctoral Fellow Naama Perel-Tzadok Explores Yemenite Women’s Music in New Album, “Memory Traces”
By: Fern Sidman
Recently, accomplished musician Naama Perel-Tzadok released a new album called “Memory Traces” which deals with the music of Yemenite women from a contemporary perspective.
The album was written as a result of research work that Perel-Tzadok did at the University of Haifa, in Israel, on the integration of Yemenite music in Israeli art music. The album combines several musical styles – classical music and Yemenite folk music, modern music, and operatic singing. The recording of the album was produced by Naama through the “Headstart” crowdfunding platform. The piece is written for a large ensemble of instruments, thirteen musicians and among them are Einat Harel, the percussionist, and the singer, Shani Oshri. The album is structured as a song cycle, based on the circle of life – starting with a song in honor of the giving-birth mother and ending with a lament.
Speaking with the Jewish Voice in a recent interview, Perel-Tzadok said that the genesis of this unique album emanated from her own Yemenite roots and the palpable pride she feels for her majestic heritage.
As the daughter of Yemenite and Tunisian immigrants, Perel-Tzadok grew up on Yemenite, Arabic, and Jewish music. In her work, she draws inspiration from many sources – nature, current events, plastic art, and the diverse worlds of music that played such an important part of her upbringing. In recent years she has examined and expanded the boundaries of ancient musical styles and traditions alongside new ones.
“My tradition is a huge part of me and I wanted to preserve it and give it the kind of visibility it deserves,” she said.
As a child growing up in Israel, Perel-Tzadok said she would listen intently to the Yemenite music played at the home of her grandparents who had migrated to Israel from their native Yemen.
“This music touched me so deeply and in so many ways as it represented my cultural tradition, especially the women’s music,” Perel-Tzadok explained. “Women’s music from Yemen had been neglected but it was so very important to preserve because it was a testament to the way they expressed their feelings about life such as being wives and mothers and dealing with birth, children and loss of loved ones. It encapsulated the women’s experience in Yemen, “ she added. In those days, only music composed by men was given any serious attention.
The songs of the Jewish Yemenite women were performed entirely in Yemenite Arabic and covered the circle of life – such as the well-known wedding and henna songs, and alongside them- songs that accompanied every day work of women, songs for childbirth, love songs, and also laments. This tradition was transmitted only orally and created within the women’s groups – and today, it has almost disappeared because the environment in which the songs were created no longer exists.
Perel-Tzadok also shed some light on the exclusive emphasis on Ashkenazic traditions in Israel when she was growing up there. To illustrate her point, Perel-Tzadok recalled, “I attended a Dati Leumi school as a child in Israel, which is run by the state. It is a religious school but they only taught the Ashkenazy tradition of prayer and learning. In the first grade, they gave me a siddur that was totally unlike the kind I had at home. Everything is Israel, including the music was focused strictly on Western traditions and everything that was Mizrachi or Sephardic was considered inferior or not worth our time.”
While pursuing a master’s degree in composition from the University of Haifa, Perel-Tzadok immersed herself in diligent research on precisely how to integrate Yemenite music into concert music in Israel. She explained that, “a big movement was taking place in which people were searching for culture to create a new Israeli. The nation was yearning for a unique sound, an ancient Jewish sound. And this path to exploring cultural ties brought us way back to the mellifluous sounds that are inherent in Yemenite music.”
As in many patriarchal cultures, research on the origins of music developed by men took precedence, but Perel-Tzadok raised the questions of “where do women fit into all of this?” She explained that men sang in Arabic-Yemenite, Hebrew and Aramaic. Women, on the other hand were only conversant in the local dialect of Yemenite Arabic. “Women were in their homes and they had no occupations. Music and dance were how they expressed themselves,” she said.
Of her new album “Memory Traces,” Perel-Tzadok said, “Sometimes I feel as if all the memories of my grandmother, (which is also on the cover of the album), of my great-grandmother, and my great-great-grandmother are folded inside the cells of the body, and even if the memory itself does not exist, there is the place it occupies and the feeling he conveys. The generation that composed and absorbed the tradition of Yemenite female songs is almost gone, and my grandmother only has a memory of the memory left, and I only have a dim feeling in my body, of some distant cultural experience, which I am a part of but have never experienced directly. In the piece I wrote – I chose to take the tradition, wake it up, break it down a bit, play with its meaning, create new memories, and awaken dormant voices.”
On her new album, original instrumental pieces are also interwoven with the songs written in Yemeni Arabic. The entire piece moves between folk and traditional moments and modern sections, while along it the percussion instrument – the Zahn (a copper platter) gives the atmosphere and leads the transition from section to section. A special lament was written among the sections on the album. The lament sounds the voice of the mothers whose children disappeared in the first years of Aliya to the Land of Israel and to this day are waiting and expecting to know what happened to them. Also, a special bonus piece was added to the album, a new arrangement of the song “Yuma VeYaba” which tells of the feelings of a girl who gets married at a very young age.
As a superlative composer, percussionist and guitarist, Perel-Tzadok has been combining Yemenite music into classical music for the last five years as well as writing music for all kinds of ensembles including the Tel Aviv ensemble. Her music is also played by string orchestras.
“As tragic as it was, Yemenite women’s songs were cut off from the mainstream cultural mode. It is a rich tradition and with the passage of time it has become more valued, respected and honored. And for that and much more, I feel that I have made a substantial impact,” she added.
Perel-Tzadok’s works are performed in Israel and around the world. She is currently a Ph.D. student in composition at the University of Pittsburgh and is also an ISEF Doctoral Fellow.
