As someone who is very interested in music and its relation to culture, the Samaritan choir is endlessly fascinating to me. Their unique musical traditions and style could be a glimpse into the ancient Israelites and their past. The Samaritan community’s small size may have allowed them to preserve ancient musical traditions that have been lost to their Jewish brothers and Palestinian cousins. 

The Samaritans ( as seem to be somewhat characteristic of their tiny nation) make several bold claims about their choir’s purity. While these claims are almost impossible (at least for me) to verify, they are nonetheless fascinating.

 On the official Samaritan webpage (which I have a sneaking suspicion was written almost entirely by Samaritan chief intellectual Benyamin Tsedaka), they begin by stating “Samaritan music is unique. Despite study in the beginning of the 20th century, musicologists have found no similar music anywhere else in the world. Its unique nature stems from its origins in ancient Israelite music.” They go on to make the very bold claims that despite around 1.5 thousand years of foreign domination, the indigenous Samaritans’ music has not been influenced at all by the plethora of conquering nations and different peoples who have settled in the land. This is very unlikely, however, it likely contains some truth. 

The Samaritans, unlike the Jews, were never displaced from the land. Their culture owing to their isolation, small numbers, and to oppression by Christian and later Muslim overlords has led their culture to be somewhat stagnant. This is not to say that the Samaritans do no poses a rich and vibrant culture, they obviously do. These conditions have made it so very little change in the Samaritan culture was able to occur. As such, they provide a unique insight into the land’s original inhabitants. While it is exceedingly unlikely that Samaritan music is untainted by outside forces as they claim, there is a strong likelihood that it does contain some elements of indigenous Levantine culture which was lost on the Jews due to their some two Millenium of exile and upon the neighboring populations due to the Arab influx and Islamic domination of the local cultures. 

I have yet to find a less biased account of the Samaritans’ musical culture. Yet, when taken with a grain of sand, the information on the Samaritan website could be very valuable. Samaritan music, at least the small sections of it which exist on the internet is endlessly interesting. I will seek to explore Samaritan musical culture more as this blog progresses. 

Below is a link to one of the only good recordings of Samaritan music I could find. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWbxhbun4XE While I do not understand this video, the first couple of minutes include Samaritan music. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hFgZLAL5vc