Anthony Russell teaches the audience to sing Hassidic niggunim

African-American by birth and Jewish by choice, Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell is a fresh new voice in the contemporary Yiddish music scene. Trained and experienced as an opera singer, Russell has more recently discovered in Yiddish art song an ideal canvas for the expression of his own multifaceted identity. In this video, Russell, with his rich bass voice, starts off by asking the audience to accompany him in singing some Hassidic nigginum (“when a spiritual feeling beyond words is expressed with a wordless melody”). Then hear him sing a fascinating piece that is a combination of a Jewish prayer song and a Negro spiritual in which both tunes preserve their original sound.