Clarification: In the Sept. 16 print edition of j., this article contained some inaccuracies. Galeet Dardashti will be making only one local appearance with her full band. That concert takes place 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24 at the JCC of San Francisco, 3200 California St. The text and information below reflects this update.
Growing up, Galeet Dardashti toured and performed with her father, Farid, a renowned cantor, performing Middle Eastern and Persian music throughout the United States and Canada as part of the Dardashti Family.
“We’ve been called the ‘Jewish von Trapps,’ ” Dardashti says jokingly.
Dardashti, a mother of two in her mid-30s, now has taken over the musical mantle of her family, which stretches back several generations in Iran.
The lead singer of Divahn, an all-female Middle Eastern ensemble, is touring a new solo show, “Monajat,” across the U.S. until the start of Rosh Hashanah. Dardashti will perform Thursday, Sept. 22 at the JCC of the East Bay in Berkeley, Sept. 23 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and Sept. 24 at the JCC of San Francisco. Only JCCSF performance will include her entire band.
In “Monajat,” Dardashti has taken the 13th-century Sufi poem of the same name, which means “fervent prayer,” and blended it into the traditional Persian songs and liturgy for Selichot, the penitential prayers recited by Jews in the days leading up to the High Holy Days.
“My idea with this show was reinventing a ritual,” Dardashti explains — a task made more difficult by the fact that Selichot isn’t even on the radar of most North American Jews.
The show features Dardashti performing some of the Persian piyyutim, or liturgical poems, traditionally chanted by men as part of the Selichot service, as well as other liturgical and secular Hebrew and Persian poetry set to new music.
Dardashti first learned of “Monajat” while listening to recordings of her grandfather, Yona, a famous singer of Persian classical music as well as a cantor. At the end of his recitation of Selichot, he would freestyle to the poem in a manner consistent with other Persian classical singers.
“You choose poets you like and then you basically improvise to their poems,” Dardashti says, explaining her grandfather’s method. “It’s a cool thing he found this poem so thematically related to Selichot.”
But beyond serving as the inspiration for “Monajat,” Yona is accompanying his granddaughter to the shows — in that she plans to sing along with her grandfather’s recorded voice. “Monajat” also features video from artist Dmitry Kmelnitsky, whose images make “people feel part of the ritual instead of being [merely] audience members,” Dardashti says.
Given her lineage, it may seem like her musical path was preordained. Yet it came as a surprise, if not to everyone else then at least to her.
She thought her academic pursuits would occupy a more central position in her life. “I didn’t think my music would take a major part of my career,” says the singer, who in 2009 earned a doctorate in anthropology with a focus on Middle Eastern and Arab musical performance in Israel.
Dardashti began to receive recognition for her first album, “The Naming.” The project brought together stories about female characters from the Torah, midrash and other sources to create a collage of Jewish texts, which gave voice to the marginalized women in the Bible such as Michal, the daughter of Saul and wife to David, who never bore any children, or Vashti, the wife of Ahasuerus, who often is vilified in rabbinic literature.
While “Monajat” has no explicitly feminist message, Dardashti recognizes that being a woman reciting Persian liturgical poetry is statement enough, especially in a community that does not have female cantors.
“I’m doing this sacred music from the Persian tradition basically as a chazzan [cantor], so I don’t think I need to do anything more,” she says.
Yet Dardashti has never encountered any resistance in her immediate family. Her father, recently retired, was a Conservative cantor at an Ashkenazi synagogue who encouraged his daughters to pursue their passions.
“I was never told this was a male realm,” she says.
For Dardashti, her new show is about helping people rediscover a powerful tradition. “I’m hoping,” she says, “that people will come away from the performance with a new appreciation for the ritual of Selichot.” n
Galeet Dardashti: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22 at the JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley, $10-$15, (510) 848-0237; 12 p.m. Sept. 23 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St., San Francisco, free with museum admission, (415) 655-7800; and 8 p.m. Sept. 24 with her entire band at the JCC of San Francisco, 3200 California St., $12-$15, (415) 292-1233 or www.jccsf.org/arts.