Soul of Yiddish

Travelling between her love of classical music and the folk repertoire of Eastern Europe, where she finds her roots, Noëmi Waysfeld created a musical journey which links those two worlds. Soul of Yiddish, released by AWZ in March 2021, takes us to the melancholic beauty of traditional Yiddish songs, mixed with original compositions on texts written by the poetess Rivka Kope (1910-1995), as well as a Yiddish cover of the Barbara’s French song A peine.

Noëmi Waysfeld sang many times absence and despair. The songs of Russian prisoners in Siberia in Kalyma (2012), the melancholic Portuguese fado in Alfama (2015), and the solitude provoked by the loss of a dear one in Zimlya (2019).

In Soul of Yiddish, her fifth album, it is no longer question of exile, but more of travelling. Noëmi Waysfeld delivers an intimate and spiritual story; an exploration of her roots, for which she surrounded herself with the violin player Sarah Nemtanu, the guitarist Kevin Seddiki and the double bass player Antoine Rozenbaum.

Just like a story-teller, Noëmi Waysfeld’s voice sound sandy, veiled, like the soft glow of a candle. And to finish in magnificence, she concludes the album with a beautiful performance of Kol Nidreï, the prayer opening the celebration of Yom Kippur.

The Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur reminds us, in the introduction of the booklet of the CD Soul of Yiddish, that the history of the Jewish religion often deprived women to sing prayers. This Kol Nidreï can be considered as a kick in an anthill: « This liturgy from Yom Kippur claims that our words are neither reliable nor credible. Women, throughout history, were precisely accused of not being trustworthy. Now is the time to make hear other speeches. When their voices rise to lead the prayer or to revisit it, this « naked » truth suddenly appears. »

  • Noëmi Waysfeld, vocals
  • Sarah Nemtanu, violin
  • Antoine Rozenbaum, double bass
  • Kévin Seddiki, guitar, arrangements and compositions

Purchase the album

Sources :

0:00
0:00

You may also like

Launch of the Mémoire Radiophonique Juive program (Jewish Radio Memory)

Initiated by the European Institute of Jewish Music in 2019, the Mémoire Radiophonique Juive (MRJ) (Jewish Radio Memory) program makes…

Musique et musiciens de bal – Isaac Strauss au service de Napoléon III

This book by Laure Schnapper, a musicologist specializing in music in France in the 19th century, allows us to discover…

Foundation ILMC

Created in 2014, the ILMC Foundation aims to protect and enhance the musical heritage written in concentration camps and other…

Silent Tears – The Last Yiddish Tango

Set to music by a Grammy-nominated (Yiddish Glory) and award-winning team of musicians, the songs on the album tell the…