A soulful musical connection
'We have to pave our own paths. It is so much part of the legacy of being Jewish and it is so much part of the legacy of being a Jewish artist and storyteller'
Acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Anita Lester has had a long and soulful connection to the music of Leonard Cohen. She began listening to his records at 12 and when she covered his song You Want it Darker, it went viral in 2016 and Cohen himself even posted it on his social media and wrote to Lester before he died later that year.
“After he had passed away, this strange thing happened where I was the second last thing on his social media page … people were writing me letters, telling me about their experience,” Lester told The AJN.
What did Cohen write to her? Lester says she won’t tell anyone, but that Cohen’s words provided her with much needed “validation” at a time when she was feeling down about her place in the music industry.
Lester reflected, “It shook me … I didn’t really know what I was doing. I got pulled in a lot of directions with music. I got signed quite young. They wanted to make me into a pop star, which never felt quite right. I think I struggled with this idea that I had to be over-sexualised, or I had to be a certain kind of musician to fit in. And it never happened for me … that’s the truth. My music career never happened. It happened in little moments, very briefly, but to have a really established career, you have to have a lot of wind in your sails and I never got that. At that point I was searching for my voice again … that validation was really good.”
Lester was asked by the Jewish International Film Festival to sing at a film about Leonard Cohen, which spawned her successful tribute show Ladies Who Sing Leonard. This performance Anita and Leonard is derived from Ladies Who Sing Leonard but features Lester’s original music as well as Cohen’s songwriting, exploring why his words continue to resonate. The evening will also feature talented musicians Rita Satch, Ari Jacobs and Alma Zygier.
The performance will mark the closing of the Jewish Museum of Australia’s exhibition A Secret Chord, which celebrated the Australian Jewish connection to music. The title of the exhibition was derived from the first words of Leonard’s Cohen beloved song Hallelujah.
Cohen grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family and was known to observe Shabbat even on tour and when he performed for Israeli troops during the Yom Kippur War. While Cohen studied other religions and was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1996, he continued to consider himself Jewish. In 2007, Cohen told the BBC, “The investigations that I’ve done into other spiritual systems have certainly illuminated and enriched my understanding of my own tradition.”
Asked why she believes Leonard Cohen’s music continues to connect so deeply with Jewish people, Lester said, “Personally I have identified that connection from really early on, when I was a kid and I heard Who By Fire [Inspired by High Holy Day prayers]… I started understanding the legacy of storytelling through him.
“A lot of Jews struggle with the idea of God. A lot of Jews don’t understand how to be Jewish in a world that is so divided with different levels of Judaism. And I think a lot of Jews are quite spiritual. They do have a sense of a deeper connection. They do have a sense of what God might be.
“But a lot of Jews connect through art and I think he is just so clearly the most articulate example of struggling with this concept of God, struggling with this concept of self and duty, and who we are in the line of Jews and he talks about it through his music. Sometimes you have to dig for it … But if you’re antennas are up to it, you can hear it straight away. He is so Jewish … by the end of his life that’s all he wrote about.”
Lester’s work spans music, painting, filmmaking, poetry and illustration. Career highlights include her solo EP Erato, debut album The Clown, an award-winning Holocaust-themed film Noch Am Leben and a portrait series of Holocaust survivors commissioned by the Melbourne Holocaust Museum. Lester has also illustrated books, including Arnold Zable’s The Glass Horse of Venice and is working on her upcoming film Song of Songs.
Lester previously told The AJN that funding for Song of Songs was pulled after October 7 and that funding is needed to make it Australia’s first Jewish feature film.
Discussing the climate of rising antisemitism in Australia, Lester lamented the lack of support for Jewish artists. She is concerned that funding is going to towards community infrastructure to support the arts but not specifically to the artists themselves who are making the work.
“In five years, there will be no Jewish art,” Lester said.
“That’s in a climate where government funding is not touching Jewish artists because of the backlash they are getting. That’s in a climate where you cannot go to communities for grants. There is nothing out there. So, we’re relying entirely on our community who are letting us down … It’s very disappointing.”
Lester said she appreciated the support of the Jewish Museum of Australia and the Melbourne Holocaust Museum but expressed that more spaces are needed to support Jewish artists.
“The Australian creative community has totally become antisemitic, that’s just how I feel. I’ve lost my closest friends in the world through this process, all who are artists, all who have been absorbed into this echo chamber of anti-Zionism, which I strongly believe is antisemitism with a different mask on,” Lester shared.
“It’s kind of unfortunately become quite normal to just expect that we’re not a part of the bigger picture. And I think on a personal note, had I not had babies in this period to contextualise the importance of what’s happening in the art scene, which means nothing compared to my children, I think I would have been way more stressed and way more aware of all the nuanced rejections that come with being a Jewish artist.”
As to how she believes Jewish artists should respond to antisemitism, Lester said, “We have to pave our own paths. It is so much part of the legacy of being Jewish and it is so much part of the legacy of being a Jewish artist and storyteller.”
Last year Lester had twins with her husband Gideon Preiss, a musician and producer, who forms the band Husky along with his cousin Husky Gawenda. She says motherhood has inspired her music to take a new direction.
“I have different views now, it was heartbreak and maybe a little politics and now it’s just about healing, tikkun olam … I have actually become more creative since becoming a mum … it’s the best thing that’s ever happened.”
Anita and Leonard will be performed at the Jewish Museum of Australia on March 11 and 12. Tickets: jewishmuseum.com.au/event/anita-and-leonard/
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