Neshama Carlebach

Were he alive today, Reb Shlomo would surely qvell with mountainous peaks of fatherly happiness that his daughter, Neshama, sings so pointedly, so purposefully and so beautifully to a needy world.

Mentored in music, rabbinics and life by her late father but now fully writing her own, distinct musical story, Neshama is answering to her own personally infused commitment to extending the reach and the meaning of music. The young, powerful singer has just released her seventh CD, Higher and Higher, (Sojourn Records/Sony). Neshama’s latest CD is so very different  from the preceding six!

It is an inspired initiative by Neshama  that brings the magical, ethereal sweep of her father’s music to different groups and cultures as well as to new audiences of her own generation who seek, perhaps through music, pathways to a realm of communal belonging thus far closed to them.

Higher and Higher is a collaboration with Rev. Roger Hambrick and the Green Pastures Baptist Choir of the Bronx, N.Y. Together, Neshama, Rev. Hambrick and the choir have created an electrifying, thoughtful, moving and very large work of Jewish gospel music that interprets the familiar song-prayers of her late father, Reb Shlomo.

The 10 tracks on the CD are a unique blending of chassidish, gospel, jazz, yeshivish, blues, folk and old-time, spiritual revival music. Some songs reverberate with exceptional heart-pounding force and energy; others caress tenderly.

This is spiritual mood music at his highest and absorbing meditation at its deepest.

Though already familiar with the tunes, this listener was rocked by the new renditions. For example, Hu Elukeinu begins with the deliberate, almost mournful singing by Neshama. But it quickly picks up speed and emotion when the choir joins her. The song then changes from a single person’s affirmation to a rallying cry of optimism and hope.

Higher and Higher, the song that gives the CD its title, is a musical ladder of introspection and motivation on which the listener ascends as though walking on waves of musical air.

Brothers and Friends takes a familiar shul tune into an entirely new realm of liturgical harmonies. The combination of the Shlomo niggun (melody) and the rich, expansive sound of the full gospel choir, in truth, effectively creates a new musical form that is profoundly affecting.

In addition to the innovative musical arrangements, the songs feature voices that are an auditory celebration. Neshama’s voice, more familiar to us, is by turns, velvety, husky and always sensual. It combines with the choir soloists, Rev. Hambrick, Vanessa Hambrick, Ajanee Hambrick and Q Smith whose voices, individually and collectively, cover the entire range of vocal extension. The result is sensational.

“Music can somehow break our hearts and allow us to feel so whole all at the same time,” Neshama writes on her website. She might have had this CD in mind when she wrote those words.

The final track Ki Va Moed opens with the broad multi-part harmonies so typical of gospel, of foot-stomping, shoulder-shaking, hand-clapping gospel music. The opening bars hold our attention by the sheer force of the enveloping harmony. Then the music soars to even more potent harmonies, guitar riffs, single voice solos and a throbbing, catchy beat. The song invites the listener to turn up the volume as high as possible, shut one’s eyes, and sway in upbeat unison with the hopeful, optimism that reverberates from the song.

“Somehow, when we don’t have the words to express all that we need, music says it for us,” Neshama writes.

The music of Higher and Higher are the “words” that fail us when hope wanes in an often dangerous and discouraging world. Listening to Neshama and the choir is an emotional experience, at times even overwhelming for the sense of promise that it evokes in us about the possibilities of goodness and purpose that abound in our world.

If you like to sing along, clap your hands to the beat, weave and bob to the rhythm, sway to the roll of the music or simply let the poetry of song-prayers wash over and through you, then this CD is for you. And if you are seeking a transportive experience, it will take you higher and higher.