Koach Frazier: To be in a space that says your voice is welcome here -- no matter what it sounds like, it's welcome -- that's an amazing place to be, and that's the kind of places I'm trying to create and cultivate, not only for singing. Deborah Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. Deborah Waxman: I'm also really happy to welcome my guest today, Dr. Koach Frazier. Koach is an audiologist, an activist. Koach is a rabbinical student and a powerful musician, and we're going to have a conversation today about singing and drumming and how music can support us, can uplift us, can lead us to transformation personally and collectively. Welcome, Koach. Koach Frazier: Thank you so much. It's good to be here. Deborah Waxman: I'm so happy you're here. I'm so excited to have this conversation. Koach Frazier: Same. Deborah Waxman: So I've been with you in many settings where you have stood in front of the room and transported us, sometimes with the drum under your arm, sometimes just with your voice, and I don't think I've ever seen you lead without also singing. And I wanted to begin by asking you how did you come to song as such an essential and critical part of a leadership role for you? Koach Frazier: Well, it's how I woke up and how I went to bed. My mother sang to my brother and I every day. And so I learned that it was just a part of life. So I've carried that everywhere I've gone, no matter if I'm in religious settings or if I'm in secular settings, singing is one of those things that brought calm and peace to me, and I've seen it do the same when I'm in communal spaces and also sing, that it has an effect of bringing people together. Sometimes it's calming and peaceful and sometimes it's there to help people as they are going through times of great anxiety or stress. Deborah Waxman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Deborah Waxman: Do people ever resist it? Koach Frazier: I think I have had some people. Out on the street, people sometimes will say, "Well, why are we singing? What does this have to do with what we're trying to accomplish?" Koach Frazier: I think sometimes they're right. Maybe it wasn't the right time to sing, and so we didn't. And other times it became a really important part of how we were bringing folks to the same ... get us all on the same page, I would say. Because sometimes you have scattered energy happening when you're doing actions or there's protests. And so to get everybody on the same page to help us move forward, singing and/or chanting have been very successful in achieving that. Deborah Waxman: I find that really to be the case, that it's just an enactment, that we are all in something together, that we are more than just one solitary voice, and that you bring it to life by joining together in song, and it's a taste of exactly what you're trying to move toward. Koach Frazier: Yeah. And sometimes it's not that the person has to sing, and that's what I would encourage some folks to do. You can just be in the space. I've participated in groups where there becomes a sound womb, per se, and I'm in the middle or other people in the middle, and sound is being wrapped around this person, and it has an effect of healing and really comfort. So sometimes I'll tell people just hang out with it. You don't have to participate in it, like adding your sound or your voice to this, but just be here and allow the energy to do what it needs to do with you. Deborah Waxman: I see sometimes in synagogue settings that people will come in and they're self-conscious and they don't know if they belong, and they'll put themselves on the fringes. And especially when it's in a singing community, what they're missing out on is the waves of sound that crash over. And I love that. I'm often in the front row, especially when I know it's a singing group, because whether or not I know the melodies, that experience of being part of something larger than myself. Koach Frazier: Yeah. And actually benefiting from the sound itself, just that sound as it washes over your body. Especially like sometimes when you're in stressful situations, you're very tense and you're kind of closed up and your body doesn't move well, but there's something about that collective music that I've been a part of that allows myself and others to just relax. Your body relaxes, your shoulders drop down, and then you can just feel. Even if you're not singing with the group, that you're feeling more part of the group. Yeah. Deborah Waxman: So I want to ask you, we're talking about singing and use of voice, and I'm thinking a lot about in Hebrew, voice is "Kol", and [the word "kol"], it's also "vote." Like using it, using your voice toward change, toward transformation, the power of that. And in your previous life, you were an audiologist, which is about your ears, about listening. And so that tension between making noise and receiving noise and taking in. Koach Frazier: Yeah. One of the things somebody asked was like, "How are you going to marry this audiology and rabbi," and what I've told them is this notion of Sh'ma, this one central aspect of our tradition and faith, and it's about hearing. I think we make the leap to say it's about listening, but I would say that yeah, in order to bring folks together and to be in one accord, you have to hear and to be willing to be in a space of hearing other people, and oftentimes even hearing your own small voice that maybe doesn't feel like it gets heard all the time. Koach Frazier: So this notion of opening up and being able to hear what's around you, to take it in and maybe listen, listening for understanding. So not just trying to say, "Oh, well I heard what you said," but to really get in there and figure out, what does this mean? What does this mean for this person who's telling me, who's giving me the opportunity to hear them, and what does this mean for me in service of of them, and then also in service of the community this person is speaking for, not only themselves, but the community, how can I better understand what's happening? Koach Frazier: But the process starts with actually hearing. Deborah Waxman: Yeah, I think that's right. I talk about that as sacred listening, and then covenantal conversation. And it is absolutely about listening in the possibility of transformation, not listening to say, "Oh look, you agree with me," or, "Oh, let me take apart your argument," but that listening with the possibility of, at the end of it, I'm going to be changed somehow. Koach Frazier: Yeah. One of the ways in which I've taught this in sessions before is that the process starts with you actually just listening, listening without interruption, without correction and without judgment. Deborah Waxman: It's so hard. It's so hard for so many of us, I think. Koach Frazier: Yeah. And you can take that not only into a space of conversation with other people, but also when we're singing, because I think so many people I've run into who have said, "I was told I can't sing or I shouldn't sing," and that's judgment. Deborah Waxman: People internalize that judgment. My father was told that when he was a little kid, and he didn't sing, he just didn't sing. He carried it with him. It scarred him. Koach Frazier: It's devastating. And to be in a space that says your voice is welcome here, that no matter what it sounds like, it's welcome. In a singing space where there's not a performance, but a collective bringing together of voices for transformation, that's an amazing place to be, and that's the kind of place I'm trying to create and cultivate. Not only for singing, but once people have it for singing, we can push the boundary and say, okay, what does this look like when you're talking to your buddy, your neighbor, your friend, your family member who has something really important to tell you. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. The singing as a starting point to build up muscles for what comes next. Koach Frazier: Yes. Deborah Waxman: My wife and I, on our first date, she said to me that she loves to dance. And I said, "Oh, I don't dance." And I said to her, "I love to sing." Deborah Waxman: And she said, "I don't sing." Deborah Waxman: And I think one of the most successful ways that we have influenced each other is that I dance and love it now, and she sings and loves it, and is especially interested in chanting. So for that to happen within the context of a relationship, but then for that to happen in ever-concentric circles in the world, that's one tiny little vision of what redemption can look like. Koach Frazier: Yes, yes. Beautiful picture of what it could be. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Koach Frazier: Yeah. Deborah Waxman: But we've talked also, like there's song, there's dance, there's listening, and I know you're a powerful drummer. So that's about all of this and also feeling, I think. Koach Frazier: Yeah. It's one of those ways in which to embody the sound itself. And so using my hands and my entire body to make sound with the drum, which then pushes out energy to the space in which I'm drumming, it's all about embodiment of the sound. And then people can feel that energy. And it works with singing too. Your body, your voice is a fantastic instrument, and to think of it in that way of an instrument unleashing energy in the space that you're in, the drum is one way to do that. It's a powerful way. Deborah Waxman: I think also it's ancient technology. Like here we're sitting, we have microphones in front of us and this is all going to be edited on the computer, but both our voices, and then even more the drums, and I think about this during [the Hebrew month of] Elul and the High Holiday season with the shofar, and these ways that our ancestors had, I think really to call attention, to crack us open, to prepare us. Koach Frazier: Yeah. We were even talking about Miriam and the timbrel and thinking about that critical moment of: redemption has come, we gotta get out of here. And she leads our people in singing and dancing. Deborah Waxman: Right. With a drum. She picks up the tof ["drum" in Hebrew] and I think that's exactly right. Scholars think that that's one of the oldest portions of the Torah, and that's what it's capturing, A, women's leadership ... How cool is that? Koach Frazier: Yes. Deborah Waxman: But B, the singing and the dancing and the drum playing. Koach Frazier: Yes. Deborah Waxman: And then that gets embedded into our liturgy twice each day. We're both remembering the redemption and we're remembering that precise moment. What an incredible legacy if we take hold of it. Koach Frazier: Right. It'd be really cool if we can embody that twice a day. Not just the actual portion of liturgy, but the actual movement of our bodies, the dancing and experiencing what it would be like and what it can be like when we are experiencing redemption. Deborah Waxman: I think that's the invitation like, but it is really hard to do. Koach Frazier: Yeah. Deborah Waxman: But let's try. Will you drum for us? Can we try? Koach Frazier: Yeah. New Speaker: [Drumming] Deborah Waxman: I could feel my heart rate slowed down. Koach Frazier: Yeah. Deborah Waxman: Is it meditative for you? Koach Frazier: It is. It is. There are times where I lose myself in the rhythm and also the sound of the drum, and I have to be careful so that even when I'm leading a service and I get kind of carried away, I'm like, oh my gosh, we've been singing this song or we've been drumming. Yeah, sometimes I can lose myself a lot. Koach Frazier: And I'll also say that I just saw this beautiful bat mitzvah in St. Louis. I wasn't able to attend, but part of this beautiful young woman's family is Hebrew Israelite. And so during the silent meditation part of the service, her brother and some of the other folks from the Hebrew Israelite community come and drum, and just this three or four minutes worth of just drumming. Even across the airwaves of the internet, you could feel just how powerful it is to just be in that space of hearing a drum, like nothing else. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Really grounding. It's really so different from how we live our lives most of the time, just to be still and listen. Deborah Waxman: But I know you've used it powerfully in ritual or in activist spaces, as well, to create a container for mourning. Koach Frazier: Yeah. There's a group called Justice Beats in St. Louis, and we created a space in the queer side of town for 49 days. We called it 49 days of mourning after the Pulse Club shooting, and we just had drums and noisemakers available for people to come and use them as a way of embodying their lament and their mourning and the pain that people were feeling. And it was a really transformational space. A lot of people said, "I just didn't know what to do. But when I came out there, I didn't have to do anything but either sit in the space or to actually pick up shaker and shake out my grief." Koach Frazier: It was a really powerful way to bring community together in a time of really deep mourning, but also just allowing people to be. Koach Frazier: I'm reminded of another time in which we used this drumming. It was the week before the yahrzeit of Michael Brown. And so people were gathering because it was the first year, and they were gathering across the street from the police station. Deborah Waxman: I didn't let people know that you have deep ties. You come from St. Louis. This is really in your ... Koach Frazier: Yeah. It was the Ferguson movement, lifted this drumming and this song leader, lifted that out of me at a really horrible time in the history of both St. Louis and our country. And so it was right at the year. And so what I said was, "We're just going to create a space for people to come and to allow them to be who they are and to grieve and mourn how they need to, and that we were going to be energy workers." Koach Frazier: And so our group set up right across the street from the police station. There was a Native woman who was with our group, and she created this beautiful space with blankets and candles, and she used sage to bless the space and clear the space. I'll tell you what, the energy that flowed from just this small group of people, people noticed when they came to that area that there wasn't going to be a lot of drama, there wasn't going to be a lot of mess, that the energy that was flowing from there was about healing and wholeness. Koach Frazier: And sometimes, you could hear the grief embodied in the sound of the drum, but oftentimes people just came, and I said bring a pot if you had a pot, and a spoon, and use that as a way of an offering to this space so that we could hold that space for goodness. And so we did that. We drummed every night for a week before his yahrzeit. Deborah Waxman: Wow. I think part of what this wakes up for me is I spent a lot of time thinking about the limits of rationalism. When words fail us, as someone who, both as a rabbi and as a movement leader, it's part of my job is, I'm part of a team that writes statements after things like Pulse and the Pulse shooting, and there are no words. We have to put words to paper, but there are no words. Deborah Waxman: But these other things, like whether it's drumming or singing, certainly being together and those things that bind us together, are I think so much more sustaining ultimately than ... maybe there are words, but I remember it from early on in my rabbinical training at funerals, at the end of the day, it's the warmth and it's the connection and it's those things that bind us together more than any particular words that anyone says. Koach Frazier: Yeah. That's the power of niggunim [wordless melodies] and all of these other technologies that our ancestors have given us to just say ... my grandmother used to say, "Sometimes, baby, there are no words, and you just have to moan." Deborah Waxman: That's right. Koach Frazier: I was just thinking about all of those ways in which our people have said we got to get it out. There's gotta be a way for us to express ourselves, and sometimes it's not through the use of words. Deborah Waxman: Right. Moan and show up. I think those are. Maybe bring some food. Koach Frazier: Right. That goes a long way. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. I think that's so right. Deborah Waxman: So let's talk about singing. And I know you compose some too. I'm most deeply grounded in Jewish singing... I spend a lot of time on the Rise Up Singing Handbook and all, but when I'm in Jewish activist settings, I'm often with folks who are clearly called to do their work to repair the world because of something about their Jewish identity. And many of them are very secular, very mistrustful of religion, don't know Hebrew or Yiddish or Ladino, any of the Jewish languages, and are mistrustful of this incredible treasury of songs and psalms and liturgy that ... we were talking about how redemption is embedded into, and how the experience of oppression and then the delivery from it is embedded into our liturgy twice a day. Deborah Waxman: And so I'm always struggling with how to either calm the anxieties or come up with some way of explaining theology that would build a bridge back to it. Not because I want to impose Jewish tradition on them, but because I want to say, draw from these riches that can help, join yourself in this chain and draw from these riches. Koach Frazier: Yes. The technology has been there, and we can pull from it whenever we need it. Koach Frazier: I know one of the songs I used to teach out in Ferguson was "Elohai neshamah she-natatah bee tehorah hee" [a prayer from the morning liturgy, literally "My God, the soul that you have placed in me is pure."] Thank you, God. My soul is pure. And I said, "If I can believe that about myself, if I believe in a creator, a universal spirit that says that I have a pure soul, then that means," ...I take it a step further and say, "That means that you've got a pure soul," right? Deborah Waxman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Exactly. Koach Frazier: So we're all walking around here with pure souls. And just to have people understand what it means to say that, as someone who says it twice a day every day, and for people who are just learn this technology, and say this is ours. And what does it feel like when I'm next to somebody else and I say, "I've got a pure soul. I started this way, and I can live and work and breathe from this way." Koach Frazier: What a gift our ancestors gave us, and I've been trying to ... so it's one of the ways in which I use the liturgy that we have and bring it to the streets and bring it to other folks, especially other people of faith who might not have even heard of "Elohai Neshamah", and that's one of those extra ways of bringing it in and letting people know. Koach Frazier: And some people says, "There's Jews all around, and people have really never brought what we have and what we've been gifted with to other people." Deborah Waxman: And they don't necessarily need to get bogged down in the "Elohai" ["my God"] piece. Koach Frazier: Right. Deborah Waxman: I think it's really important to have the conversation about God, but you could just focus in on "neshamah", like soul and pure and however you think the ground of being is conceptualized, that concept of a pure soul. Really, it's very radical, it has huge implications. Koach Frazier: Yeah. And brings a different kind of spirit to a collective gathering when we talk about justice. Because it's not about, well what if this person did something wrong. We all came to the table with the same beautiful, pure soul. And so let's start from there. And how different would it be if we came to the table with that, as opposed to where we're all damaged goods trying to get whole. No. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. And also what are the circumstances we have to create to allow that pureness to sustain itself, to shine out at all times? Koach Frazier: Yes. Deborah Waxman: Do you want to sing together? Koach Frazier: Sure, let's do it. Deborah Waxman: Okay. Can you say a little bit more about what it is? Koach Frazier: Sure. Yeah, so the song Solid as a Rock, it comes from the Highlander Center, which is ... I think it's going on 86 or so years of being a transformational and educational space for activists for social justice all over the country. It's out of Tennessee, New Market, Tennessee, I think is where it is, and it's an amazing place. A lot of activists have come through the Highlander Center. And they have such a rich history of music being a part of social activism there. So the song comes from there. Deborah Waxman: One of the things I love about this song too is it's a call and response, which means you don't need sheet music, and you don't need to remember the words, you just gotta listen, to go back to where we started, and then be willing to raise your own voice. Koach Frazier: Yes. Deborah Waxman: So this is not going to be collective singing. It's going to be Koach and me singing together, but hopefully you'll join in at home. Koach Frazier: It's kind of collective, kind of solo. Together: [Singing 00:26:06] "Solid as a rock, rooted like a tree. We are here, we are strong, in our rightful place" Koach Frazier: I love that song for so many reasons, some of which you already said. And then it being an affirmation of ... I might not feel like all of those things, but I can affirm them to be so. Deborah Waxman: Exactly. Koach Frazier: And then having someone to echo that affirmation is really powerful. Deborah Waxman: I think call and response is so powerful. I try to use it a lot. I remember reading about African-American churches in the South where they didn't have enough money for hymn books, and hymns that were usually sung in unison, they would sing them in call and response, because that's how everybody could sing along. And it wasn't necessarily literacy, there weren't necessarily books. And I just love that, and that at the end, you break down every barrier and try to make it so that there's ... I don't know that anything would have ever gotten my father to sing, because that shame was so deep from when he was five and they said you're a listener, not a singer, but there's so much we can do to try to make it possible. Koach Frazier: Right. A classic call and response for our services is the Barekhu [Call to Prayer]. Deborah Waxman: Exactly. Koach Frazier: Thinking about how we get called to prayer, we don't come to prayer, we get called to prayer, and that we have to answer and say, yes, we showed up, we're here. Deborah Waxman: And you need ten, you need a community. You can't do it by yourself. Koach Frazier: That's right. Deborah Waxman: It's what I feel like one of the most important things that Judaism has to offer in the current moment is the correction to radical individualism. That this core understanding that is embedded within Judaism, almost any way you take it apart, that we are interdependent, that we are reliant on each other. And it's just, it's so sustaining to me personally, and I think it's such an important course correction to this current moment. Koach Frazier: Yeah. And that's one of the major ways you build resilience is you have this core understanding that you are not alone and that we do need each other, and part of our tradition calls that forward, that we need each other to celebrate and also to mourn. Deborah Waxman: That's exactly right. Deborah Waxman: And I think singing, we join our voices together, we enact it right there, we listen. I know that every voice lesson I've ever taken and every choir I've ever sung in, they say listen for the other, you're not just listening for your own voices. And we get quiet when we have to, when our voices are too weak or the emotions are too strong, but the song goes on. Koach Frazier: Yes, yes. Thank God. There's other people who can come in and fill the void. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Thank God. Deborah Waxman: Oh, Koach, what a wonderful conversation and the drumming and the singing. Koach Frazier: Yeah. Deborah Waxman: Thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Koach Frazier: My great pleasure. Deborah Waxman: You can find more information on this topic and more about KB. You can look on hashivenu.fireside.fm, and you can also find more resources on ritualwell.org. Deborah Waxman: I am Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to Hashivenu, Jewish teachings on resilience.