Live Davenings: Technologies of Ritual Learning and the Convening of a Jewish Sacred Music Underground

Abstract: Surreptitiously collected field recordings of cantors at the pulpit, made in disregard for the rules of synagogue comportment, circulated for decades among a small group of collectors in an underground economy of homemade dubbed cassettes. These secret recordings, referred to as “live davenings,” usurp the characteristic ephemerality of prayer to document a twentieth century aesthetic concept of cantorial music as an art form beyond its ritual function. In the past decade, many of these recordings have surfaced on YouTube and file sharing sites, reaching an expanded audience and exposing a new generation to a largely abandoned style of liturgical performance. Through ethnography with field recording makers, internet-savvy collectors, and the artists who use the secrets in the live davening archive to build projects of cantorial revival, this article offers an examination of a body of archival material that has not previously been the topic of any scholarly investigation.