The Wandering Muse

The iconic Jewish phrase (“the wandering Jew”) that inspired the title of Tamás Wormser's documentary seems appropriate for a film that draws a kaleidoscopic portrait of peripatetic Jewish musicians who fuse past traditions with modern styles to create something vital and contemporary. Shot over a period of some seven years, the documentary features numerous narrative threads, from a pair of Argentinean pals who play klezmer music with some added tango touches, to a Montreal performer who mixes cantor prayer with jazz and hip-hop, to a portrait of Ugandan villagers who mingle Hebrew chant with African drums. Other segments feature an American from Detroit who unearths protest songs hailing from Russia and Germany in the early 20th century, and a Moroccan woman in Tangiers who sings a haunting Judeo-Spanish melody from the Sephardic tradition. Wormser's film perhaps mimics the title too much in that it's rather lackadaisically structured, meandering from subject to subject and place to place, while the musicians themselves are only sketchily portrayed. But the range of music is impressive, and the performances are treated with deserving respect, resulting in a rich tapestry of the myriad ways in which performing artists are expressing their Jewish identity musically in the modern world. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)