Niggunim: The Songbook
About the Book
In these compositions and on the accompanying recordings, you can hear older styles of Jewish music - nigunim (wordless melodies), zemirot (Sabbath-table melodies), choral music, and traditional nusah (prayer chant) - organically melding with the spontaneous improvisation, liberated harmonies and indie soul music of the Brooklyn soundscape. This music is for singing, together. Sing this music with others - at your table, in sacred spaces, and anywhere else where you might create spontaneous moments of collective beauty. Indeed, the nigun is the great communal musical art form of Jewish life. Please use these melodies to build your own singing communities. Nigunim: The Songbook includes the sheet music to the first four CDs in Joey Weisenberg's Nigunim series.
About the Author
Joey Weisenberg
A virtuosic multi-instrumental musician, singer, and composer, Joey Weisenberg has devoted himself to opening up the sounds of people singing together in community. The founder and director of Hadar’s Rising Song Institute, which aims to cultivate the grassroots musical-spiritual creativity of the Jewish people, Joey works to educate and train communities around the world to unlock their musical-spiritual potential and make music a vibrant, joy-filled force in Jewish life. Joey is the author of Building Singing Communities, a practical guide to bringing people together in song, as well as The Torah of Music, a treasury of Jewish teachings and insights about the spiritual nature of music, which received the National Jewish Book Award in 2017. A devoted student and teacher of ancient and traditional Jewish melodies, Joey composes new nigunim that have moved and inspired Jews around the world. He has released eight albums of original music, most recently L’eila, available on Rising Song Records.