The musician, singer and poet Ofer Kalaf knows how to tell about the Majaniyat. These are the poets of Yemenite Jewry, whose poetry has been passed down from generation to generation and was especially accepted by its followers, the mountainous region in southern Yemen.
Even as a child in Jerusalem, Kalaf was captivated by an almost mystical connection, in the poetry of the women around him, until he realized that the poetry of the Yemenite women emanated from his throat. “I felt like my grandmothers were asking to talk through me and I did not know what to do with it. I changed my diet, went back to drinking coffee with Huwaij, smelling smells and listening to Yemeni music,” he recalls.
Later, in a chance meeting with the Yemeni musicologist and researcher Dr. Tom Fogel (following in the footsteps of the late Ephraim Ben Yaakov), Kalaf revealed to him songs he had composed, and Dr. Fogel suggested that he sing in Yemeni pronunciation.
He later wrote songs such as the women’s songs he heard. “I felt like everything was going through me like a tunnel connecting me to something else. I realized I had to compose and allow grandmothers to speak through me. At first I was embarrassed of myself writing this way but then I remembered my mother’s aunt’s poem, He says.
On Thursday, June 9, Kalaf will perform at the Confederation House in Jerusalem the show “Janianate” with Dr. Tom Fogel. And the dancer Leah Avraham, a native of the Hugria region, is the last descendant of the Hugaria dynasty of singers. “Leah Avraham was born in the village of my mother and Tom’s grandparents. She is one of the last of the Majani. “Her participation in the show makes me very excited,” he says.
What characterizes women’s poetry?
“They sang about the plight of women, about their early marriage as 7-6 year old girls to an older man they did not want, about parting from their parents’ home and caring for their mothers. At separate events for women, they would sing the Majyan song. They stayed in the world of oppression and did the same to their daughters. “
The song of the Majaniyat connects to Kalef’s childhood days in the Yemenite community in Ein Kerem, Jerusalem. “I loved listening to the women serving, I saw them excited and crying at the henna ceremonies, I was intrigued by the stories and often asked questions. As a kid, they answered me half-heartedly, maybe they did not want to expose me to their traumas so as not to hurt me,” he says.
When did you understand?
“It was on Saturday a groom of relatives. After the synagogue I saw the women with the handkerchiefs on their heads and hands clasped, a movement that is very typical of them, sitting on the side. I went over and asked them directly questions about life they had in Yemen. Suddenly their hands went down “Tell me what they went through, how they married them as six- or seven-year-old girls and the move to the husband’s house. They explained that this prevented forced conversion to Islam. They did not elaborate on what happened on the wedding night, after all they are religious women who do not talk about such issues.”
The stories touched you.
“The women’s stories echoed the story of my mother who grew up as an orphan. Her mother died in childbirth and a year later her father also died and she was handed over to her aunt. My mother was married at age six to my father who was then a 17-year-old boy. “Later I met the woman he loved, we would go visit her. We also married her to a man she did not want. I very much identified with the loneliness of my mother who grew up without parents and siblings. I felt I had to take care of her. As a child I took care of her.”
What was her reaction to the show?
“I did not tell my mother about the show. I was afraid of her reaction. I actually took a personal story that is hers and I sing it. It is a light musical show but it is not an explained show. Everything is told through the songs. After watching it my mother was very excited, really choked with tears. She said “She felt like she was at her wedding again. In doing so, I received retroactive approval from her for my work.”
Kalaf began his career on stage at the age of 11 as a drummer in a Yemeni dance troupe from Jerusalem. He learned drumming (the Yemenite rhythm for women’s dance) from the granddaughter of Rabbi Yosef Kapf. After his release from the army, he performed at the Israel Festival, produced by Makor, the choreographer Anna Sokolov. The old friends of the Inbal band persuaded him to go and study “Be professional and come back with a musical degree” urged him.
He studied Western classical poetry at the Jerusalem Academy of Music. Four years ago, he published his translation of “The Poet’s Love,” a cycle of poems by Heine and Schumann, and performed with the Ramat Gan Orchestra, arranged by Michael Wolfe.
He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in performance from the Jerusalem Academy of Music, established and heads the department of multidisciplinary poetry at the academy and also teaches at the Nissan Nativ poetry track in Jerusalem.
Kalaf specializes in the sound sciences, guides singers, researches the methodology of voice development and the laws of aesthetics in different cultures and participates in educational social projects, including the Keshet Broadcasting project “Seeing Far”.
“My lecturer at the academy, Prof. Shavit, taught me about Yemenite taste singing. In doing so, he connected my home to the academy. It was a founding moment,” reveals Kalaf. “Education brought me home. On the one hand I adopted new identities that are not mine and fell in love with them. On the other hand my home of Yemenite poetry gets a place of honor in academia.”
The Majaniyat, the song of the mothers: Ofer Kalaf
Special guest, singer and dancer Leah Avraham
Thursday, June 9 at 8:30 p.m.
The Jerusalem Confederation House, managed by Efi Banya