If you make and perform music long enough, it will change you and the course of your life. Irrespective of any professional success, the contours of your life story revolve around choices dominated by your interest and pursuits.
As the child of musicians, I knew that to be true. I consider my dad a musician even though in reality he made his living in blue collar jobs like factories and truck driving. He practiced multiple instruments for hours daily until he couldn't anymore due to health issues. I was lucky enough to record him playing saxophone on my song Conspiritorium and to include him onstage with me on several tour dates.
His daughter (me) is a prolific musician who dreamed of being on Star Search as a kid but never sent in a tape because we didn't have a video camera. When I left home at the age of 17, I ended up becoming an observant Jew, and studying torah in Israel. I got really, really religious, (hallucinogens were involved, it's a long story) but I found out, after I had committed to the lifestyle, that ultra orthodox Jews, and even some who call themselves "modern orthodox" deal with a religious restriction called "kol isha." The law states that men aren't permitted to listen to the sound of a woman's singing voice, as it's considered akin to perceiving her "nakedness."
The letter of the law states that a man should leave if a woman sings, but of course, in practice, this really means that women in the community don't sing (from childhood) in the company of men who aren't in their immediate family.
When I was a freshman at Yeshiva University in NYC, a couple months after the devastation of 9/11, my mom (who had also recently moved to NY) suddenly got terminally ill, and I was her primary caregiver. She had my young sister living with her at the time, and my sister ended up in the foster system as my mother was hospitalized and eventually died, and I was her only local family.
At some point in the aftermath of my mother's death, music started pouring out of me as I extemporaneously sang my heart out into my flip phone. In this way, I processed all the insanity. I told some friends that I was writing music, but only ever sang it for my female roommates.
One of those friends who I told ran a poetry journal at Yeshiva University and asked me if I wanted to perform my music at his show. I wasn't sure what to do, but I knew that choosing to perform in front of men, would affect my reputation in a considerable way.
As I considered what to do, I realized that I felt that the music was guiding me from the inside, and that to do myself justice, I had to take this opportunity, religion be damned.
The question I grappled with wasn't whether I was comfortable breaking a religious rule, you see, but whether I would accept the cultural stigma that went with performing.
I adopted the stage name (my Hebrew name) Nehedar and have been performing regularly in NYC ever since then, just never on the Jewish sabbath which excludes Friday night gigs, and in the long days of summer, even Saturday night shows are no go.
So I curated my own shows including fundraisers, and we grew a tight knit scene of orthodox affiliated Jewish musicians. I was lucky enough to get cellist Elisheva Maister to join my band full time in 2018. She had been a part of the breathlessly reported all women Hasidic rock band Bulletproof Stockings, the subject of an upcoming documentary. They got a lot of press coverage because they performed original music at mainstream venues but requested an audience of "women only" until the band went their separate ways.
The singer of that band, my friend Perl Wolfe had the power to do what I hadn't even considered, making a splash with her own "all women" band, but I ended up making my own scene anyway.
Our new album is called Escaping Zion and it's kind of amazing that it took 9 albums to think of that name, or to write an album that deserved that name, because it turns out music is the thing that saved me from religious extremism.
I am pretty sure, at this point I won’t be a "one-hit-wonder" whatever that means. But with time, I've learned that the reward of living a musical life is no less than the music itself. I’ve built a life where my music works for me.
I would encourage young artists to consider the development of craft, and nurturing their local music scene as artistic success.
Links to Nehedar
Website: http://nehedar.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nehedarmusic
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nehedar
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nehedork/
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