Year
2017
Arba Otiyot
Sacred Hebrew Songs from the Saharan Maghreb
The Chicago Manual of Style
Arba Otiyot. Contemporary Jewish Music, vol. 5. Directed by Yair Harel. Edited by Edwin Seroussi and Yuval Shaked. Jerusalem, Israel: Jewish Music Research Centre/The Ben-Zvi Institute/NaNa Disk, 2017. Commercial Recording. CD.
This CD is dedicated to piyutim (sung sacred poetry) of the Jews of the Tafilalt (Berb. Tāfīlālt) region, in particular to the lore of the venerated tzaddiq (Heb. virtuous/ holy man) Rabbi Yaacov Abuhatzira and the members of the rabbinical dynasty he founded. The songs have been codified in a compendium titled Yagel Yaacov. To the poems of this collection, we added piyutim by other authors, which are related to the Moroccan Jewish tradition. The concept and performance of this production was developed by the Piyut Ensemble of the Ben-Zvi Institute, a Hebrew University institution dedicated to the research of the Sephardic and Oriental Jewry, under the direction of Yair Harel and Avraham Cohen.
You can download MP3s at Amazon, or find it on Apple Music.
Sound Examples
Arrangement by Yair Harel and Niro Abekasis
Arrangement by Yair Harel
Arrangement by Yair Harel and Niro Abekasis
Arrangement by Yair Harel
Arrangement by Niro Abekasis
Arrangement by Yogev Levi and Yair Harel
Arrangement by Yair Harel
Arrangement by Yair Harel
Arrangement by Yair Harel
Arrangement by Yair Harel and Niro Abekasis
Arrangement by Yair Harel
