Arby and her band are currently on tour in North America and, naturally, I wanted to take the opportunity to record with her again for the Nigun Project. I was originally expecting to record a duet with Arby, and so I was in for a very pleasant surprise when she arrived at the recording studio with her entire eight-piece band. I had taken a small studio for us to work in, but thanks to the resourcefulness and the quick-on-his-feet work of engineer Dan Huron, we were able to squeeze everyone in and make the recording happen.

The nigun we recorded is based on a piece I learned while sitting around the table at my grandparents’ house. It is a very old nigun — one that my grandfather told me was supposed to have been composed by the Baal Shem Tov himself, which would date the melody back to the 18th century. I sang the piece for Arby and her band and explained what a nigun is, through the translation of Arby’s manager Christopher Nolan. The concept of a devotional wordless meditative melody was familiar to the Malian musicians, and we were able to quickly delve into the work of composing a new song together. Arby was put in the mind of praying by the old Jewish melodies I was singing, and her verses call upon the sounds of the Islamic tradition of her birth. Her two back-up singers sang the words “*Ya salaam,” meaning, “bring peace,” as a chorus to bind the two realms of spiritual expression that Arby and I drew from.