REFLECTIONS – Jewish Musical Journeys

Do you or your family know any unusual or interesting Seder or Shabbat songs? If so we’d love to hear from you – even if you don’t have the voice of an opera singer!

The REFLECTIONS project is creating an anthology of the huge range of different melodies sung in Jewish homes around Britain at Seder, Chanukah and Shabbat and recording them for posterity. Through the family stories of our interviewees we are tracing the origins of the songs and in this way developing a collection of Jewish Musical Journeys – a social history of the British Jewish community through its music.

Each family has its favourite tunes for the traditional Pesach songs or Shabbat Zmirot lyrics and the variations reflect the different family origins. We have already recorded eight different versions of Chad Gadya from Belarus, Hungary, Lithuania, Rhodes, Russia, Turkey and the UK!

Visit our website http://www.jewishreflections.org where you can hear the recorded music, read the notated song sheets and the family histories and see photographs of the people who have contributed.

It’s not too late to see your family’s musical heritage added to the anthology – phone Viv Bellos on 07956 912567 or 020 8457 8795 to arrange an interview.