Pharaoh’s Daughter lights up Club Helsinki with Jewish soul (11/9/00)
By Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., November 10, 2000) - By the time South County was plunged into darkness on Thursday night due to a blackout, Jewish world-beat ensemble Pharaoh’s Daughter had already charged up the audience at Club Helsinki with enough electricity of its own to fuel the rest of the evening’s performance. Candles and flashlights replaced spotlights, and Pharaoh’s Daughter played campfire-style, without microphones or amplification.

The unplugged nature of the second half of the evening didn’t matter one whit. In fact, it probably only added to the powerful, mystical ambiance lead vocalist Basya Schechter and her sextet had already created with their alluring mixture of Middle Eastern, Indian, and Jewish-European melodies, rhythms and textures.

Club Helsinki has already seen itself transformed by various musicians into a Louisiana roadhouse, a folk coffeehouse, a jazz joint, and a rock club. On Thursday night, Pharaoh’s Daughter provided an essence of Middle Eastern souk or casbah, with its sinuous melodies and snakelike, irregular polyrhythms. With two percussionists, a bassist, a woodwind player and two guitarists, the band was able to weave a variety of patterns ranging from the haunting to the celebratory.

Schechter was a compelling presence, one who would probably blend in easily in Istanbul or Tangiers in spite of her Brooklyn origins. Her voice, with a natural quaver or vibrato, was eminently suited to the wailing, chant-like style favored by Middle Eastern soul singers.

And soul music is Pharaoh’s Daughter’s business. The group combs places as far-flung as Armenia, India and Algeria for song styles that suit Schechter’s vocal texts: nigunim, or Hasidic-style wordless devotional melodies, Biblical and liturgical excerpts, or original lyrics.

Schechter bounced effortlessly from Hebrew to Yiddish to Ladino to English on songs including an Armenian setting of “Lecha Dodi,” which featured a duet between her vocals and electric guitarist Benoir, and “Shnirele Perele,” a traditional Yiddish song about the coming of the Messiah whose melodic roots trace back to Turkey.

On this latter song in particular, Schechter hit some stirring emotional notes, the kind that a listener feels deep inside the spine. Her cantorial-style slides and slurs did melodic flips and somersaults as the musicians provided a funk pulse that made the music the Jewish equivalent of gospel testifying. When the lights went out a few minutes later, more than one listener commented that it was as if the spiritual electricity she had channeled caused a short-circuit in the earthly electric grid.

“Afilu,” which Schechter said was inspired by her pious grandfather, bore the dynamics of progressive rock. The song’s one-chord, modal drone was heightened by Benoir’s electric guitar solo at the end, which pushed the tune into Velvet Underground territory.

Throughout the evening, Schechter doubled on acoustic guitar and oud, a large, mandolin-like instrument. Tracey Love-Wright juggled duty on flute, melodica, whistles and other woodwind-type instruments, while accompanying Schechter beautifully on harmony vocals.

Pharaoh’s Daughter had varying effects on its audience. Some were moved to dance improvisationally off in a corner, acting out in movement the drama inherent in the music. Others rocked in their seats to the music’s ineffable pulse. Some felt moved to sing along whenever possible, while still others floated along on the music’s ethereal wings, like those of an eagle Schechter sang about at one point, an eagle that would spread its wings and take the deserving ones to a promised land, perhaps not unlike the place where Schechter and Pharaoh’s Daughter took a club full of inspired listeners on Thursday night.

[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Nov. 11, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]

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