Kapelya

From its opening shruti box and solo voice, Chana Raskin's Raza's debut album project Kapelya carries much anticipation. A vocal album where history and community express themselves through new arrangements. Raised in orthodoxy, Chana is part of a generation of young egalitarian musical service leaders on the flourishing Jewish cantorial scene which is well represented with an all-star cast from the American circuit. This is an album packed full of Chasidic soul and tackles the ban on ‘Kol Isha’ (a woman's voice) to give back the heritage to all of its vocalists. To Ashkenazi Jews who know these melodies, it offers familiarity and origins to the traditions of the Rabbis of the Pale of Settlement (Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland) where group singing and melodies were integral to Jewish practice and community. There are instrumentalist touches which place the music in the Ashkenazi traditions (by clarinet, in ‘Nigun Poltava’), and the US (by guitar, in ‘Nigun Hisva’adus’). The liner notes tell us what we already understand: this embodies the living heritage of lives past, allowing them to live on through time and space.