NYC's Pharaoh's Daughter Inhabits A Multi-Cultural Island Of The Mind

-by Derek Beres

"The well is an incredible image in the Judaic tradition," says Basya Schechter, waving her hands wildly at a table in the Union Square Coffee Shop. She gets excited while talking music, dragging an interviewer's questions down numerous conversational side streets and blind alleys. She apologizes, though it makes a journalist's job easier when an inquiry into the song "Hagar" (from the latest Pharaoh's Daughter album Haran) turns into a lesson in Judaic history.

Hagar was the Egyptian-born handmaiden of Sarah, Abraham's wife, the woman behind one of the most influential men in religious history. Sarah was barren, and Abraham wanted a child (at 86 years old, no less), choosing Hagar to bear that child. She became pregnant, and Sarah grew jealous. Hagar fled into the desert, where she spoke to the Angel of the Lord and was informed the child would be called Ishmael, and was told to return.

Fourteen years later, she would return, and be comforted near a well, but what interests Schechter, and what informs the beautiful, rhythmic, violin-led song is the cherubic conversation. Hagar is the first person God speaks to directly. As with many religious traditions that understand the primeval importance of the feminine, somewhere along the line the dominant priestly caste forgot the manner by which they entered this world: through woman.

Schechter's own history and this gorgeous album are entwined with Hagar's story. Growing up in a large Hasidic family in Brooklyn, she ran into trouble when announcing that music would be her career path. Reconciliation came long ago, though for years she lived without their blessing, a bitter irony considering that Schechter's love for music grew around the dinner table.

"I was not a musician as a child," she says, "but my strongest influences were my father and brothers singing mystical texts with layers and layers of harmonies, and lots of rhythm. We would all have knives and spoons and bang on everything on the table. It was such a strong, emotional and addictive experience. The songs could go for hours; you didn't want them to end. This was the foundation of this album."

Indeed, all but two songs on Haran are textually based, in a number of languages: Arabic, Farsi, Ladino, English, Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew. The lyrical structures are hypnotic, chant-like at times. While sitting at brunch, another idea springs into her mind: to explore all the world's religious traditions and find common threads embedded in texts--the melodic aspects of the Bhagavad Gita, Koran, Bibie, etc.--and make an album. It may be a while before that project reaches the active stage, though, since "another four albums' worth of material" were left over from the Haran sessions.

What did make the cut is enough for an incredibly rich and lush textured album. Haran is about Schechter's band, an amazing collection of local musicians that she's been developing for a decade. Her previous albums have been filled with quality songwriting, especially the more recent Exile and Out Of The Reeds, albeit more dependent on the songs than the band itself. This leads to her other major influences: Robert Plant and Jim Morrison.

Introduced to classic rock in her mid-teens, the sounds of Led Zeppelin, the Doors and Pink Floyd have long been thematically relevant to her life, although not in her music. Haran changes that trend. No, there are no searing guitar riffs, poetic asides about being an iguana, and the album doesn't synch up to The Wizard of Oz very well at all. What does appear relies completely on production, and the weaving together of sonic threads. Meg Okura's violin parts are a regular feature of Pharaoh's Daughter tracks, but on "Lev Tahor," braided with pianist Jason Lindner's heartbreaking tinkling, the landscape is exceedingly full. When guest Raquy Danziger's kamanche jumps in and through the melody, it punches straight into the heart.

There's a similar trend on all 10 tracks, which is surprising given how diverse these songs are. Master santoor player Alan Kushan, whose prolific work is the centerpiece of two groundbreaking Samsara Sound System albums, propels "Ka Ribon." Lodged into the closing "Askinu" is kora player Yacuba Sissoko, adding a dash of West Africa to the soundscape.

"I've been so Middle Eastern-oriented, and something was not happening this time around," says Schechter about her reasons for introducing new sounds. "That chapter was closed, but something else opened up. I hitchhiked around Africa a long time ago, and was heavily influenced by the music I found there."

It's not a surprise when she mentions the Berber musician Abdelli as one of her heroes. His 2003 release, Among Brothers, was recorded with musicians from Cape Verde, Burkina Faso, Belgium, Morocco, Argentina, Tunisia, Canada, the Baku desert, Iran and Chile, among other places, and his broad- and open-minded approach is not unlike Schechter's. It's not empty "fusion" for its own sake, or cut-and-paste songwriting. As she says, "I never decide to put this and this and this together. Things happen, and then you either go for it, or not."

Such an approach is rather easy in New York, a world unto itself. Kora players blaze in Washington Square Park beside a group of forty-somethings playing Dylan covers long into the night. Opera singers and violinists fiddle underneath bridges in Central Park; Chinese pipa players swelter in subways; a tuba player solos in front of the Museum of Natural History. Ironically, for Schechter, the inspiration for her own career came not from these crowded, polyglot avenues, but via a legendary Malian singer heard while camelbacking across a desert.

"Oumou Sangare changed my life," she says. "I listened to her music on a scratchy cassette tape from a Berber guy I was staying with. He called it Tuareg, he didn't even know what it was. I had to search my ass off when I got back to America. I thought I remembered one melody, so I could play it on guitar. Then one day I was with [cellist] Rufus Cappadocia, and he said it reminded him of this music that he had. He put it on, and it was Oumou Sangare."