This class will introduce participants to liturgical Jewish poetry from the Middle East, and Arab musical mode system ("maqam") used to sing them! Through careful listening, brave experimentation, and maybe even trying out a solo or two, participants will have the opportunity to relish the ways in which the specific notes, slides, and ornaments of the Arab musical aesthetic can offer new possibilities for expression within Jewish music.

Yoni Avi Battat (he/him) is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer, celebrating his diverse Jewish ancestry through music. He maintains an active performance schedule across the country and internationally, playing violin, viola, and oud (middle-eastern lute) in collaborative and interdisciplinary projects spanning a wide range of styles. In 2015, Yoni founded his own Yiddish-Jazz band called Two Shekel Swing, which has since released their debut album “Pocket Change,” performed in Toronto’s Jewish Music Week, and opened for Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird, amongst other public appearances. Over the past 15 years, Yoni has been immersing himself in maqam, the musical mode system of Arab music. These efforts gave way to his 2022 debut album Fragments, which explores his Iraqi-Jewish identity by pairing maqam music with lyrics in Arabic, Hebrew, English, and Yiddish. His most recent project in this style is Kedmah: The Rising Song Piyyut Project, which presents Jewish song and poetry from the Middle East and North Africa. Their debut album, Simu Lev, emerges on Rising Song Records in the Spring of 2024 – one of the first projects of its kind to present this repertoire to American-Jewish communities in an egalitarian format. From 2021-2022 Yoni toured nationally as an actor and violinist with the Tony Award-winning musical, “The Band’s Visit.” Yoni now lives in Boston, MA, working locally and nationally towards his mission of bringing Arab music into the soundscape of American Jewish life. www.yonibattat.com @yoniavibattat