QUIET ECSTASY
THE HIDDEN ONE (HANE’ELAM): JEWISH MYSTICAL SONGS
by Richard Kaplan, Five Souls Music, 2009
Review by Jonathan Seidel
Richard Kaplan's new CD, The Hidden One (Hane'elam): Jewish Mystical Songs, presents a powerfully evocative musical dance between the "hidden" and the "revealed," as heard in poignant, immediately haunting silences and in the sparse, understated nigunim (melodies without words) found in subtle doses throughout the album.
Vocalist and cantor Kaplan, accompanied by an ensemble of stellar musicians and singers, has created a prayerful gem of a CD that I (as one who deeply resonates with Sephardic and Hasidic music) believe will become a classic. It's as if he were channeling the primordial music of a barely known, esoteric kabbalistic sect, situated somewhere in the spaces between Haim ben Attar (the famous Sephardic mystic who influenced the birth of Hasidism) and the Ba'al Shem Tov. I felt I had somehow heard this music before, perhaps in a previous gilgul (incarnation), when we were engaged with a paradigm-shifting Sufi/Sephardic/Hasidic/Proto-Jazz community.
To devotees of Jewish music, this CD is a love song, sung with and without words, sung in Hebrew and Aramaic from the classic liturgy and Zohar, or sung to the words of traditional and newly composed piyutim (para-liturgical sacred poetry). It is a love song addressed to "You," the very immanent and personal Divinity that so often remains hidden when we create rigid and imaginary boundaries, which rob us of the mystical encounter. The Hasidic/Sufi trajectory present in these recordings beautifully expresses this intimacy with the Divine, which as the Qur'an has it, is "as close as our jugular veins" or as accessible as the memory of a beloved departed bubbe or nona (Yiddish and Ladino for "grandmother"). Kaplan is remarkably in touch with this most subtle of proximities.
Those who know Kaplan's previous CDs, Tuning The Soul and Life of the Worlds, are familiar with his uncanny ability-shared with musical and poetic luminaries such as Israel Najara of the sixteenth century-to marry melodies from non-Jewish locales (even Mongolia, in this recording!) with Jewish mystical poetry. He also creates new Latvian/Lithuanian-influenced tunes for pouring out the heart, and performs a stunning Eastern European wordless song meant to accompany the dying process. The CD reconnects me to my ancient Ashkenazic roots while expanding upon them with several exquisite "neo-Hasidic" musical creations composed by Kaplan.
And be prepared for a few tracks that reflect the mournful pathos and longing of the Diasporic experience (perhaps best understood as a universal state of profound spiritual disconnection). You may cry a little-OK! I, however, actually find this melancholy (or better yet, "deep soulfulness") very appealing.
From a little-known nigun of Reb Nachman of Breslov, to melodies preserved by
the modern musical adept Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, to Turkish, Moroccan,
and Spanish chants, Cantor Kaplan has produced an array of quietly ecstatic songs and original compositions that give life to the term "Jewish Renewal." Kaplan's jazzy riffs, supported by ney (cane flute), ‘ud (lute), tar (frame drum), cimbalom (hammer dulcimer), and more seemingly incongruous instrumentation, are set to revelatory and inspiring verses that send me right into the lap-or before the throne, as it were-of the Mystery of Mysteries. It is a very cool album with great aural warmth, clearly derived from the embers of the Kabbalah's overriding intention of tikkun. If you are searching for a collection of songs with which to focus your meditation and Jewish contemplative life, this is truly it!
Rabbi Jonathan Seidel, Ph.D., is the spiritual leader of Or haGan Jewish Community of Eugene (www.orhagan.org), rabbinic chaplain at Lewis and Clark College, and adjunct faculty at University of Oregon/Portland State University.
