The American sound artist Paul Brody will be performing his Poetry Electric project as part of the Night of Museums Hanover 2025. Poetry Electric is a project that integrates spoken word and everyday sounds into an electro-acoustic performance.
What sounds, melodies and words do you associate with everyday Jewish life?
Brody asked Jewish people from the Ashkenazi cultural area this question. The resulting interviews, melodies and sounds are used in part to create an ambient music composition. Acoustic sounds are mixed with electronic elements and occasionally accompanied by Brody’s live trumpet solo.
BACKGROUNDS
The Jewish Museum Berlin once invited me to an event where artists were asked to talk about their cultural heritage based on an object they associated with being Jewish. I grew up secular and didn’t start integrating religious practices into my life until I had young children. Bringing a menorah or prayer shawl didn’t feel right to me, so instead I tore a sheet of notebook paper out of my notebook and sketched a crude question mark. Questions played a central role in my experience of Jewish culture; from my early Torah studies to my enjoyment of Jewish comedians: Are you right? Am I wrong? And, I recalled at the time, Hillel the Elder used questions to lead us from one humanistic lesson to the next:
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If I am only for others, who will be for me?
And if not now, then when?
It’s fascinating to see how my answers to these questions have changed over the years. As a sound artist, I find solace in the realm of questions. With the smallest melodic nuance, music can embody the question without demanding a concrete answer. Like the rondo or the concerto, Hillel’s teaching, this architecture of questions, has become a musical form that gives me a sense of freedom.
Paul Brody (May 2025)
You can find more information about the Night of the Museums at Villa Seligmann here.
