Paul Bass Photo
Phillips in the WNHH studio.
Stacy Phillips slid into a rendition of “Shalom Aleichem” even though he wasn’t sitting around a dinner table preparing to welcome the Sabbath.
Instead, Phillips was sitting in a radio studio playing the traditional Jewish melody, usually sung to welcome “ministering angels,” on his Dobro, in his own way.
The Grammy-winning New Haven bluegrass musician was appearing on the premier episode of a WNHH radio program called “Chai Haven,” focused on everything local and Jewish.
Phillips traced how Jewish melodies such as Chasidic “niggunim” migrated to modern bluegrass and other musical modes. He did that both in conversation and in playing his Dobro and his fiddle.
In between, Phillips also traced how his life followed a similar path to the music’s, how he developed from a tzitzis-wearing yeshiva bocher growing up in New York’s Washington Heights to a multi-genre performer, teacher and writer living in New Haven’s Westville neighborhood. (You can hear Phillips jam with a revolving cast of “bluegrass characters” the last Tuesday evening of every month at the Outer Space Ballroom; here’s a link to an account of one recent performance.)
In addition to performing live in the studio, Phillips brought along a 1977 recording by a group called the Breakfast Special. Phillips played in that band along with two musicians who would go on to internationally renowned careers: banjoist Tony Trischka and mandolinist Andy Statman. He aired a track called “The Brothers Ben Chassid” that took a traditional Jewish melody and reconfigured it into a whirling, at times frenetic new sound, interrupted by Phillips interjecting a Dobro rendition of the Yom Kippur liturgical prayer “Avinu Malkeinu.” The track presaged the advent of “newgrass” as well as the continual reinvention of traditional religious music as an ingredient in modern musical gumbos.
The “Chai Haven” episode also featured a look back at the first time a rabbi preached form the pulpit in a New Haven church, following a verbal duel with a minister that took place in the pages of the morning newspaper …
… as well as a speed-sermon by Congregation Beth El Keser Israel Rabbi Jon-Jay Tilsen about a lesson that today’s presidential campaigns can learn from this week’s Torah portion, featuring a “dumb ass” (donkey) who can’t bring itself to utter a curse.
Click on or download the above sound file to listen to the full episode of WNHH radio’s “Chai Haven.”
thanks so much for this!
love hearing the music and the verbal contextualization!