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Jewlia Eisenberg and Queer Piyut

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Abstract

This memorial to composer and Charming Hostess band founder Jewlia Eisenberg explores the queer erotics of “Agadelkha,” a musical setting of a piyut by Abraham ibn Ezra and part of Eisenberg's larger “queer piyut,” project.

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Notes

  1. Jewlia’s work is documented across four releases on the Tzadik Records label: Trilectic, Tzadik Records, 2001; Charming Hostess, Sarajevo Blues, Tzadik Records, 2004; Charming Hostess, The Bowls Project, Tzadik Records, 2010; and Charming Hostess, The Ginzburg Geography, Tzadik Records, 2022. Bent Like a Question Mark, a project Jewlia and I undertook as artists in residence at YIVO in 2018 to explore the archives of poet Celia Dropkin, was never completed in the form of a recorded album, however, a work in progress presentation was documented that is available on the YouTube channel of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; “Celia Dropkin: Bent Like a Question Mark,” YouTube Video, 30 July 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKeGlHELe1I&ab_channel=YIVOInstituteforJewishResearch.

  2. The promotional material for this event is still available on the Contemporary Jewish Museum website: “Fierce as Death: Queer as the Song of Songs,” https://www.thecjm.org/programs/1023.

  3. While critical engagement with her music was plentiful, to my knowledge, Jewlia’s work has been the subject of only one academic publication (Janezko 2009).

  4. Jewlia may have studied the piyut “Agadelkha” during her multiple field work trips to Israel where she worked with elder paytanim. An overview of musical traditions related to this particular piyut is available on The National Library of Israel online archive, https://www.nli.org.il/en/piyut/Piyut1song_010001700000005171/NLI.

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Funding

This work was supported by research fellowships from the UCLA Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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  1. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Jeremiah Lockwood

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  1. Jeremiah Lockwood
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Correspondence to Jeremiah Lockwood.

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This article was first presented as a paper talk at the conference of the Association for Jewish Studies on 20 December 2021, and later revised into a standalone lecture at Boston University on 18 October 2022. I give great thanks to my friend, and Jewlia’s greatly beloved friend, Dr. Ianna Hawkins Owen, for encouraging me to continue to work with Jewlia’s legacy. I would also like to offer gratitude to The Jewish Cultural Endowment and African American Studies Program at BU for their material support of my lecture and concert, and to my musical collaborator Ricky Gordon who undertook the project with me of presenting the Celia Dropkin song cycle Jewlia and I composed. Parts of this essay also appeared in a blog post I wrote for the Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience (Lockwood 2022).

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Lockwood, J. Jewlia Eisenberg and Queer Piyut. Cont Jewry 43, 509–518 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-023-09523-9

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