“In my house I felt a combination of Israeli or Iraqi culture — it was hard to tell the difference at that time, what was from which culture and what was from the other. We had the Iraqi dishes of my family in my house and I heard my grandparents speaking Arabic, so I did grow up American but also with a strong sense of Mizrahi-Israeli identity at home, hearing a lot of Hebrew as well because my dad grew up in Jerusalem.”
Although Battat maintained close links with the local Jewish community throughout his childhood, he felt it was very different to what he saw at home.
“That Jewish community was essentially an Ashkenazi Jewish community. It didn’t have any outlet for me to experience the melodies and traditions, community feeling and customs of Iraqi Jews. Ashkenazi culture has dominated American Jewish culture for so long.
Yoni Avi Battat (Edoardo Carpenedo)
"I know lots of people like me who grew up with a lot of Yiddish lingo on their tongues and thinking of Jewish food as being matzah ball soup and gefilte fish.
"That’s all fine and good but it doesn’t encompass the totality and diversity of Jewish culture. I know lots of Middle Eastern Jews in the US who are yearning for an outlet to be able to express that part of their Jewish experience.”
Music has been key in providing a link to Battat’s Iraqi-Jewish heritage. He studied the violin as a child and, encouraged by his parents, joined a local klezmer band.
“I even started my own klezmer band when I was 16. It became an important part of my musical voice and still is — but then I didn’t realise what I was missing by not having outlets for my Mizrahi Jewish expression through music.”
A trip to Israel with his grandfather introduced Battat to the intricacies of Arabic music when he took a lesson in the complex melodies of the genre.
“It has micro-tonalities — that really excited me as a musician and also I had an amazing feeling that this was my roots, my culture, my tradition.”
His grandfather also bought him his first oud, an instrument similar to a lute.
“I fiddled around with it,” he says. “I didn’t have any lessons but because of my violin training I was able to get some basic melodies out and I enjoyed playing it. That was the opening that started me on the path of discovering Arab and Iraqi music.”
Until 1950, most professional musicians in Baghdad were Jewish. “I think the reason was different religions had different ideas of what a respectable career was. I think for Muslims, being a musician was not a respectable career.
"Because it wasn’t a good job for Muslims, Jews said this is a good job for us. It just ended up being something that was passed between Jews. I also think there was a rich tradition of singing and music in synagogue life and Jewish home life. There is a repertoire of Arab music that accompanies Jewish life as well.”
Fragments is Battat’s attempt to make sense of having encountered Arab music, language and the traditions of his ancestors as “an outsider”. He says that memory and traditions are not always passed down from generation to generation.
“This is something true of so many people’s experience, especially in our modern world that involves so much immigration and travel. Many people’s stories have a lot of fragmentation in them, especially when colonialism is involved.”
He talks about “the very particular complexities of the establishment of the State of Israel and Mizrahi Jews’ roles within that state, and the very sad circumstances by which they had to leave the place where they thrived for thousands of years in Iraq”.
He believes many Mizrahim tried to relinquish their “Arabness” in an attempt to integrate into the mainstream society of the young state.
“I don’t speak Arabic because my dad just speaks only a little bit of Arabic.
"He was embarrassed to speak it in front of his friends in Jerusalem because that was a lower-class language to speak, and more importantly, it was a way of differentiating enemies and friends in Israeli society — if they speak Arabic, they are an enemy.
"But there is this complication: there are so many Jews that speak Arabic as their native language.
"All those very complex factors I think are what really caused the fragmentation that I am describing and the lack of generational continuation and memory.
“From the research I’ve done and from the stories I’ve heard from friends who are in a similar position where they are trying to retrace their roots, the Mizrahim of my grandparents’ generation are less willing to tell the full story because it is complicated, it is challenging and it is painful.”
Palestinian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Jordanian musicians have all contributed to the album.
“In my dreams I would love to bring Arabs of all faiths and Jews together to appreciate this music for the ways in which it is a part of our experiences.
“My prayers are that I can continue bringing this music to Arab communities and Jewish communities and have that be an opportunity for building peace.”
Fragments is available from bandcamp.com and to stream
