גודל הטקסט
When we speak of Jewish music outside Europe, the Moroccan piyyut tradition is among the richest. It rests on Andalusian music, a melodic world that took shape in Muslim Spain and passed to North Africa. Mohamed Chatou, in an article on the Times of Israel blogs, cites the claim of the scholar Yosef Shitrit that already in the ninth century a Jewish musician named Mansur accompanied Ziryab in Cordoba, in the days when the repertoire was being shaped. This is a claim about a very distant event, and we cannot verify it ourselves.
The best-known expression of the tradition is the singing of bakashot (petitionary hymns). Morocco, unlike Aleppo, developed a tradition in which each Shabbat has its own order of piyyutim, according to the weekly Torah portion, and with a clear influence of the Andalusian nouba system. The first collections were printed in Mogador, among them "Rani ve-Simchi" from 1890, and in 1921 cantors from Marrakesh and Essaouira compiled the book "Shir Yedidut," which is still in use.
The figure at the center of the chain of transmission in recent generations is Rabbi David Buzaglo, a blind Moroccan paytan and composer, who has been described as the great artist of the Moroccan piyyut. His best-known student is Rabbi Haim Louk, born in Casablanca in 1942 to a family from Mogador. According to the Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University, Louk was orphaned of his father at the age of four, became acquainted with piyyut in the choir of the "Em Habanim" school, and at the age of ten met Buzaglo. He read works of Jewish thought aloud to his teacher and later accompanied him at performances in Israel. After studies in London and at the Etz Chaim Yeshiva in Tangier he immigrated to Israel in 1964, settled in Beit Shemesh and served as a school principal for 22 years. Between 1987 and 2003 he served as cantor and rabbi of the Em Habanim congregation in Los Angeles, and in 2011 he received the Ministry of Culture's prize for music.
In Morocco itself, Louk had a supporter from outside the Jewish world as well: the same article mentions Abdessadek Chekara, a Muslim Andalusian singer from Tetouan, who encouraged him. The Sacred Music Festival in Jerusalem hosted in 2014 a combination of Louk with the Chabab Al Andalous youth orchestra from Morocco, as a revival of an old encounter between musicians.
In Israel the continuity of the tradition is seen mainly in Ashdod. Here operates the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra, which presented selichot series in which the audience and soloists sing piyyutim, and in which Louk also appeared; and here operates the Center for Piyyut and Song, which was founded in 1988 and expanded the bakashot beyond the synagogue as well. A tradition that was passed orally from teacher to student is today also found on the stage, and alongside this it continues to be heard in synagogues on Shabbat.
Sources: Jewish Music Research Centre, Hebrew University; Times of Israel (Mohamed Chatou); The Jerusalem Post; English Wikipedia (Baqashot); Arutz Sheva (Channel 7); Mekudeshet Festival
Image: Unknown author, Public domain (PD Old), via Wikimedia Commons.