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Two ancient music worlds carried by Jewish communities from Central Asia and the Caucasus into modern Israel. Bukharan Jews preserved Shashmaqom, the six-modal classical suite of Samarkand and Bukhara, recognized by UNESCO in 2008. Caucasian Mountain Jews (Juhuro) brought lezginka rhythms and Tat-language song. Georgian Jews shared the polyphonic tradition of Christian Georgia (UNESCO 2001). Today these traditions live in Or Yehuda, Holon, Brooklyn, and on Israeli stages, preserved by paytanim, doira players, and a new generation fusing them with klezmer and electronic music.
Cultural note, The Bukharan community arrived in waves: a small religious aliyah in the 1880s built the Bukharan Quarter in Jerusalem (Shchunat haBucharim), then a massive post-Soviet wave in the 1990s. Most Caucasian Mountain Jews left Dagestan and Azerbaijan in the same period and concentrated in Or Yehuda, Hadera, and Sderot. Music was the cultural anchor that survived three exiles: Persian, Soviet atheist, and Israeli absorption pressure. When you hear a doira frame drum at a Sephardi henna ceremony in Israel, it is most likely a Bukharan musician.
Shashmaqom Tradition
Bukharan Instruments (doira, tar)
Caucasian Lezginka & Mountain Jew Music
Georgian Polyphonic Tradition
Modern Israeli Artists & Diaspora
A Bukharan Music Conversation
A conversation with a Bukharan paytan in Or Yehuda preparing for a wedding, the kind you might have at the Bukharan cultural center on Shabbat afternoon.