WORDS & MUSIC: A Purim Celebration of Persian Jewish Music with Galeet Dardashti

What is Persian Jewish Music? How can understanding it more deeply unlock new meaning for us in our celebration of Purim? In this hour-long workshop, renowned vocalist/composer and anthropologist Dr. Galeet Dardashti invites us to explore Judeo-Persian musical traditions both through live music and through recorded music examples from her family; her grandfather, Younes Dardashti, was one of the most famous singers of Persian classical music in Iran, and her grandmother’s family came from Hamadan (modern-day Shushan). Galeet's family history and her own artistic work will be central to this Purim session, which will be offered on Zoom to welcome the celebration of Shushan Purim.

Iranian-descended anthropologist and vocalist/composer Dr. Galeet Dardashti has earned a reputation as a trail-blazing performer, educator, and advocate of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish culture. She is widely known as leader/founder of the all-woman Sephardi/Mizrahi ensemble Divahn, and through her multi-disciplinary commissions The Naming and Monajat; she is currently Artist-in-Virtual-Residence at Indiana University’s Jewish Studies program and Musician-in-Residence/Cantor at JCP Downtown in Manhattan. Dardashti’s scholarly publications examine Israeli music/media and Mizrahi cultural politics in Israel and the US. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at NYU and Rutgers and was recently Assistant Professor of Jewish Music/Musician in Residence at JTS in Manhattan.

This is the second installment in our brand-new WORDS & MUSIC series, bringing extraordinary makers and thinkers to Central to explore the stories and sounds that shape Jewish tradition.