Kabbalachia by Basya Schechter and Shaul Magid (2024)

Album review by Gabby Cameron

As the sun sets on a Friday evening over Fire Island, congregants gather at the Fire Island Synagogue to welcome Shabbat, donning their kippahs and tallit with shorts and sandals. What type of music might one hear in such a setting? Together, Cantor Basya Schechter and Rabbi Shaul Magid developed a localized musical tradition of setting Kabbalat Shabbat texts to Appalachian old-time music. Over the course of a decade, Kabbalachia was born. 

The Kabbalachia practice began as an impromptu endeavor. In the liner notes to the album, Magid writes, “[Schechter and I] needed to prepare for Friday night davenning. I arrived with my banjo. While Basya was finishing something inside, I started picking some old-time tunes on the small outside patio just to pass the time and get in some practice. At some point Basya came out and listened for a few minutes. Then she sat down with some percussion and started riffing on a tune using the Friday night liturgy. In about an hour we had three or four new Kabbalat Shabbat tunes in raw form, adopting them from old-time Appalachian banjo music. The rest came later.” When the two decided to capture this newfound tradition, they transported recording gear across the Great South Bay via water taxi, transforming Fire Island Synagogue into a makeshift recording studio.

The album opens with a percussive “Shiru,” set to old-time tune “Sail Away Ladies,” featuring close vocal harmonies—a hallmark of Appalachian folk musical traditions. Schechter notes, “Sail Away Ladies has the sense of being swooped up, think of contra dancing, which feels right for this next stage of ascent.” Kabbalat Shabbat includes Psalms 95–99 and 29, each corresponding to one of the six days of creation. Shiru (Psalm 96), representing Monday, serves as a fitting opening track for Kabbalachia. The text, “Shiru ladonai shir chadash,” which translates to English as “sing to the Lord a new song,” reflects on the past week and expresses optimism for the week ahead. Magid’s clawhammer banjo accompanies the percussion on this track, enhancing the buoyant, lofty atmosphere that captures the essence of Kabbalat Shabbat. 

For some, the idea of Jewish people playing banjo may seem unusual, but the Jewish involvement in Appalachian music dates back to the 1950s. In 1954, sixty miles west of a newly established Fire Island Synagogue, Jewish teens gathered in New York City’s Washington Square Park on Sundays to join Pete Seeger’s “hootenannies,” where dozens of banjos, fiddles, and guitars cacophonously roared on bluegrass and old-time music. Some participants of the hootenannies include Marc Horowitz, who years later would become Béla Fleck’s childhood banjo teacher. Another participant was a young songwriter named Robert Zimmerman, now known as Bob Dylan. Considering this history, Schechter and Magid’s musical decisions in Kabbalachia feel apt, engaging in a multi-generational musical lineage of North American-New York-Appalachian Jewish hybridity. 

Lecha Dodi is often considered the centerpiece of the Shabbat evening service, inspiring Schechter and Magid to create two distinct renditions on Kabbalachia. Both versions feature an upbeat A part with a sliding, scooping vocal melody. In the sixteenth century, kabbalists in Safed welcomed Shabbat by dancing and singing Lecha Dodi amidst apple orchards and nature; thus, the sliding qualities of Shechter and Magid’s renditions of Lecha Dodi on Kabbalachia evoke a sense of movement. They write in the liner notes, “you could hear how clogging, which was a common form of [Appalachian] dancing, would have fit right into this tune.” As a result, both renditions include percussion that are similar to the syncopated rhythms of Appalachian foot percussion (e.g. clogging, flat-footing). The B parts are intentionally slower, echoing the Hasidic tradition of performing Lecha Dodi. Midway through, the dynamics shift into a broad crescendo, signaling the congregation to stand and face the door in preparation to welcome Shabbat. 

“Lecha Dodi 1” is set to the old-time dance tune “John Brown’s Dream,” which originated in the Blue Ridge Mountains and gained popularity in the early twentieth century through Hobart Smith. This rendition features two-part vocal harmonies, bass, banjo, fiddle, lap steel guitar, and percussion. “Lecha Dodi 2” shares a similar instrumentation, with three-part harmonies. “Lecha Dodi 2” is set to the tune “Sally Anne,” a song collected by Alan Lomax, with its first recording dating to 1929—though Magid speculates that “Sally Anne” is much older.

The lap steel guitar, with its “slide” sound, is the hallmark instrument that ties both versions of Lecha Dodi together. Such textural choices reflect Schechter and Magid’s interpretation of the joyous welcome of Shabbat, sonically grounding the psalm in its kabbalistic history while likening it to the whimsical nature of an old-time square dance. However, instead of calling square dancers, they call upon the arrival of the Shabbat bride.

“Ma’ariv” is set to the bluegrass and old-time tune “Shady Grove.” The minor modal quality of “Shady Grove” provides an ideal backdrop for the Ma’ariv prayers, traditionally recited after sunset. Schechter and Magid’s rendition includes the prayers that precede the Shema. This recording draws inspiration from the version of “Shady Grove” performed by bluegrass hall-of-famers Jerry Garcia and mandolinist David Grisman. Grisman has openly discussed how his Jewish identity influences his music, notably collaborating with Andy Statman in 1995 on the instrumental klezmer album Songs of Our Fathers. The mandolin solo in “Ma’ariv,” played by Matt Turk, indexes Grisman’s iconic tone and improvisational choices, perhaps paying homage to the longstanding Jewish involvement in Appalachian string band music.

“Yedid Nefesh” is accompanied by the fiddle tune “Cold and Frosty Morning.” In Hasidic traditions, Yedid Nefesh is recited in the morning, making “Cold and Frosty Morning” a fitting choice for text-setting. Yedid Nefesh is a liturgical poem that emphasizes an enduring, intense love of G-d. Schechter and Magid attribute “Cold and Frosty Morning” to Virginian fiddler Henry Reed, who said in 1931 that “it’s got a lonesome sort of sound.” Like “Shady Grove,” the minor modality of “Cold and Frosty Morning” feels appropriate for calling upon the themes in Yedid Nefesh. 

Schechter and Magid were initially inspired by banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck’s rendition of “Cold and Frosty Morning.” Fleck, who spent much of his childhood with his Jewish grandparents, once remarked, in an interview with Curt Schleier for the Forward, “[My grandparents] were the center of our world. We did all the big hits: Passover, Rosh Hashanah—typical New Yorkers celebrating the classics.” It was Fleck’s grandfather Morris who gifted Fleck his first banjo. Though Fleck explores a wide range of musical styles on the banjo, knowing that those who nurtured his potential, like his grandfather and childhood teacher Marc Horowitz, came from a background steeped in Jewish values gives his music a sense of rootedness. Schechter and Magid’s reference to Fleck’s rendition of “Cold and Frosty Morning” reflects how Kabbalachia embraces and enters into dialogue with broader Jewish-Appalachian hybridities.

The music on the final track, “Shalom Aleichem,” though not originally from an Appalachian string band tradition, is presented in the same style. Magid sets the text of Shalom Aleichem to a niggun composed by his Brooklyn teacher, Dovid Din, which he refers to as “Dovid’s niggun.” In the liner notes, Magid writes “[Dovid] spent considerable time teaching in Jewish and Ashrams and inter-faith venues. Known for his piety and expansive sense of religious practice and devotion, he was a popular teacher of Hasidism and Kabbalah.” Shalom Aleichem can be traced back to the sixteenth century and is sung communally at the beginning of a Friday Night Shabbat meal. 

The instrumentation features a very subtle finger-picked banjo, paired with guitar, lush string orchestrations, some percussion, and swooping vocal harmonies. The creaking sounds of the bowed violins create an intimate atmosphere, drawing the listener into a deep, swirling contemplation reminiscent of prayer. The vocal harmonies highlight the communal nature of Jewish liturgical music. About halfway through the track, the harmonies transition into an intricately crafted string coda, blending pizzicato and bowed legato elements that echo the tone and candor of Appalachian fiddling, a soundscape that fully and peacefully guides the listener into Shabbat.

Kabbalachia is a cohesive record that engages with broader dialogues in Jewish-New York-Appalachian hybridities, participating in the growing wave of Jewish Appalachian musical traditions reminiscent of artists like Andy Statman, Jacob’s Ladder, and Nefesh Mountain. The album roots the listener in Shabbat beyond place and time, whether one welcomes Shabbat by flat-footing in Blue Ridge in the twentieth century, or through swirling circular dancing in the Upper Galilee of the sixteenth century (not surprisingly, both are at similar elevations!). Through this synthesis, Kabbalachia bridges cultures and eras, creating a timeless, transcendent musical experience. The sun has set over Fire Island, and the Shabbat Bride has arrived. 

Gabby Cameron, University of Maryland 

Gabby Cameron, banjoist, songwriter, and PhD student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, received the 2022 International Bluegrass Music Association’s Neil Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award for her research on Jewish involvement in bluegrass music. She has been selected as a 2025 Artist in Residence at the Strathmore Performing Arts Center in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2024, Cameron was invited to study banjo under Béla Fleck at the prestigious Blue Ridge Banjo Camp. She resides in Baltimore, Maryland, with her husband and their cats. www.gabbycameron.com