In rabbinic literature, minhag, or custom, is often contrasted to halakhah, or law, with the latter being binding—even as the former often has a powerful legal status of its own. From ancient times, such customs also distinguished local and regional communities from one another, especially when it came to liturgy. Matt Austerklein writes:
Music is perhaps the richest, most diverse, and most contested of Jewish minhagim. It is what gives us sonic solidarity with our fellow communities, whatever flavor they may be, and comprises core musical (and mystical) folkways relating to prayer, study, and the lifecycle. Yet music is also the most “promiscuous” of cultural forms, flying through the air like disease and worming its way into unsuspecting ears.
Music as minhag is thus a distinctive form of intergenerational Jewish practice and heritage. It is a dynamic force, absorbing and rejecting elements of the surrounding national soundscape and transforming them for Jewish purposes. Yet it also contains immutable elements which pass between the generations. Whenever Jews have needed to flee or migrate, they have carried their musical customs like matzah upon their backs, keeping their continuity as one nation of many nationalities.
More about: Jewish music, Liturgical music, Tradition