For centuries, Jewish women along the Malabar Coast filled notebooks with Jewish-themed songs in Malayalam and Hebrew. Recently, a series of programs, including scholarly discussions, music and dance and a book exhibition in Washington, DC, attempted to revive that musical heritage.
The highlight was a performance by Nirit Singers from Israel - a group created by the Kerala-born Galia Hacco, who migrated to Israel as a teenager in the 1950s. Hacco, who leads an oral history project in Israel focused on the lives of Cochin women, and Venus Lane, also born in Kerala, were the two members of Nirit Singers who performed at the program, titled 'The Women Who Kept the Songs from India to Israel: The Musical Heritage of Cochin', at the Library of Congress April 7. The same evening, they performed at an event hosted by the Washington, DC Jewish Community Center.
