Hazzan Isaac J. Cabasso
[Biography of Hazzan Isaac J. Cabasso, to be provided by the academy: where he grew up and learned, the congregations he served, and the melodies he was known for.]
[A paragraph on his teaching: the students he trained, and what he gave the community through song and prayer.]
The academy that bears his name carries that work forward, so that the melodies he loved continue to be heard in our synagogues.
The tradition we preserve
The Jews of Aleppo (Halab) and Damascus brought to Brooklyn one of the richest musical traditions in the Jewish world. Its prayers are sung in the maqamat — the melodic modes of Middle Eastern music, such as Rast, Bayat, Sigah, Hijaz, Saba and Nahawand — each with its own mood and color.
Every Shabbat, the hazzan leads the prayers in a maqam chosen to suit that week's Torah portion. Learning to hear, recognize and sing in each maqam is at the heart of Syrian hazzanut.
Pizmonim are Hebrew songs of praise, many set to melodies from the region's classical music. They are sung at the Shabbat table and at life's milestones — a brit milah, a bar mitzvah, a wedding — and are gathered in the community's beloved songbook, Shir uShbaha Hallel veZimrah.
The Baqashot are a cycle of devotional poems that Syrian Jews have sung together on winter Shabbat nights, in the hours before dawn, for generations — a tradition that began in Aleppo and continues in Brooklyn today.