Haredi music is a soundtrack for people’s lives—the sonic wallpaper in many Jewish stores and homes. I like to imagine the writers of these songs as they pen what they hope will be the next big hit, wondering if it will sound good at a wedding or during The Musaf service—but also if a 14-year-old will connect with it alone in their bedroom, or a middle-aged parent will feel impelled to turn it on while driving their kids to school. Contemporary Haredi music is a soundtrack for people’s lives—the sonic wallpaper in many Jewish stores and homes.
we have music that melodically is firmly rooted in the arena-rock and power ballads of the 1990s and early 2000s. This feels simultaneously current enough (in that it isn’t ‘60s folk music) but also retro enough to not be too contemporary and, by extension, “goyish.” With its emphasis on strong melodic hooks, it’s also very singable: someone leading Mussaf or a group at a Shabbat table can really get into it. Interestingly, Jewish versions of this sub- genre sound remarkably similar to Christian Evangelical worship music. Haredi Jews and Evangelicals are generally not aware of this, but are quick to hear the similarities if you play each a sample of the other’s music. The similarities make sense: both have origins in late-20th century popular music and share the goal of inspiring people to worship. Then we have music for weddings and other joyous occasions. This has been heavily influenced by electronic dance music (EDM) and other genres originally
is played—defines its Jewishness. “We only use music at very particular occasions,” he said to me recently. “So we use it for dancing, for a wedding, and things like that. We use it for serious times, like parts of the davening… we want to reflect happiness or sadness or seriousness.” As someone who has had headphones of some kind of another firmly planted onto my skull long before iPods existed, I wonder about what this means about all the other music that we listen to. Most Jews nowa- days, even those who “do Jewish” in much of their lives, do not exclusively listen to Jewish music; this, I would argue, says something about how integrated the sound of music has become both inside and out- side the Jewish community. Which brings me, perhaps surprisingly, to the matter of haredi music. Here are some truths about contemporary haredi music: it is one of the only genres of music that has listeners who listen to it ex- clusively, it has managed to create a specif- ic sound that is immediately recognizable, and it can be irresistibly catchy despite its unrefined melodies and lyrics that are often beyond trite. All of which makes it a great lens through with to examine some of the questions raised above, about what makes music not just incidentally, but characteris- tically Jewish. If you’re unfamiliar with the genre I’m calling Contemporary Haredi, it is a distinct sound that has been building momentum for over 30 years. As with other genres, it has its superstars: Mordechai Ben David, Yaakov Shwekey, and Lipa Schmelczer are some of the biggest names. Lyrically, the music draws primarily on biblical and litur- gical sources, layered with original lyrics in English that are begging for a rewrite. Con- temporary Haredi has its origins in cantorial music and Hassidic songs, blended with the folk and rock sounds of the 1970s and ‘80s. As time passed, technology became more advanced, and synthesizers became both more complex and less expensive, the sound evolved. Today it has not only be- come ubiquitous in the haredi community but has often crossed over into the general Jewish population (you know if you’ve ever danced to “Mashiach” at a hora) and occa- sionally gone globally viral as well (look up the Miami Boys Choir on TikTok). This is, decidedly, not just music that is reserved for simchas and prayer; it has crossed into everyday life. Contemporary
Lipa Schmeltzer and Avraham Fried
intended as club music. This is music engineered to be danceable and viscer- al, and its translation to the haredi world makes a certain amount of practical sense. It is often producer driven and created at a computer and keyboard rather than with a full band in a studio. In a world where cost-effectiveness is a virtue, having music that can be created by one person and per- formed at a wedding without requiring a full band (or any band at all) has its merits. A certain amount of sense—but not entire- ly. In the non-Jewish world, EDM is the last
This is a good example of creating a framework for the idea of Jewish music as such. For many Jews, much of the time, when they listen to Jewish (or “Jew-ish”) music, they are doing so more out of a sense of nostalgia and tradition, or a sense of obligation, or in virtue of circumstance. This doesn’t negate the Jewishness of that music, but it doesn’t bode well for it as a living, evolving part of culture, either. What I’ve been calling Haredi Contem- porary includes a couple of different sub-genres, as it were. On the one hand
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