(Jewish Group) High Holiday event honors the early 20th century Black female cantor

This World War I era advertisement in Pittsburgh’s Jewish Criterion features Goldye Steiner as “The famous and only Colored Lady Cantor in the word (sic),” A century later, she is being portrayed by Shahanna McKinney-Baldon. Graphic by Pittsburgh Jewish Criterion

When Shahanna McKinney-Baldon came upon the life and work of early 20th-century entertainer Madame Goldye Steiner, the dramatic soprano who performed Jewish liturgical music along the East Coast and in the upper Midwest as “the only colored woman cantor in the world,” she said she felt an instant connection.

“I was already excited to learn that one of the Black cantors of the 1920s was a woman. But when I learned that she was from Milwaukee, which is also my hometown, I became a little bit obsessed,” said McKinney-Baldon, an educator, thought leader on American Jewish diversity, and herself an African American from Milwaukee who serves as a khazente, the Yiddish term for female cantor or hazzan. “And now here we are, bringing Madame Goldye back to Brooklyn for the High Holidays.”

McKinney-Baldon will raise her voice in tribute to Goldye Steiner as part of “Hidden Melodies Revealed 15,” a Rosh Hashanah event at Brooklyn Bowl in the Williamsburg neighborhood, on Sept. 25 at 8:30 p.m. Dressed in full traditional cantorial garb, McKinney-Baldon will appear as Steiner as part of the program.

“Hidden Melodies Revealed 15” is the 15th anniversary of a High Holidays performance and concept album from Yale Institute of Sacred Music Fellow Jeremiah Daniel Lockwood, steward of the current Brooklyn-based revival of 1920s “golden age” Jewish liturgical vocal music, or khazones, that was recently featured on National Public Radio.

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