Cantor Dr. Ramón Tasat is one of the most accomplished Jewish musical talents in the DMV area, with a lifelong love of singing with roots to his birthplace of Argentina and experience leading services from age 14.
Tasat, a Silver Spring resident, has a doctorate in voice performance and is a composer and choir conductor on top of his cantorial work. He also has the fascinating talent to sing in Hebrew, Ladino, Spanish, Italian and English.
Tasat has taken his talents across the world and spent time becoming involved in the DMV Jewish community, working as a cantor at Agudas Achim Congregation, Temple Shalom, Shirat HaNefesh and as the music director of the Kolot haLev choir at Ohr Kodesh Congregation.
“Music has been with me since I was a child. My mother taught, played both the guitar and the piano, and she taught at our home every day. I was in contact with music all the time. I began to play, to study guitar when I was six years old, and then when seven, my mother took me to a choir rehearsal,” Tasat said.
That experience has stayed with him, along with the influence of the Teatro Colon, a historic Argentinian Opera house that the family attended.
Tasat said that the Jewish component to his musical love comes in large part from his late father, a devoted Jew of Syrian origin, and the family’s Sephardic heritage.
“He [my father] was very connected to a synagogue called Beth El in Argentina. And the rabbi at the time was an American Rabbi Marshall Mayer,” Tasat said.
He added that he begun singing in the synagogue’s choir when he was 10 and got his first taste of cantorial work at 14 when Mayer asked him to lead High Holiday services after the unfortunate death of one of the cantors.
“I said yes, and I led the service, and that was my beginning of being incredibly connected to the liturgy,” Tasat said.
Tasat eventually moved to the U.S. to complete his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, which set him up both for his future career and a mindset of what he hoped to create for himself and others.
He said that in coming to America from Argentia as a Sephardic Jew, he sometimes felt like a minority within a minority having to learn a new language and having some cultural differences with Ashkenazi Jews.
And after Tasat finished his degree, he sought out a new community, which he found in the DMV region, and became a cantor, starting at Agudas Achim.
“When I finished my doctoral degree, I was looking for places where I wanted to live. And people, many times, go to where their journey takes them, and they live wherever. And that wasn’t my approach. I wanted to go live in a place that I wanted to live. I thought to live on the East Coast, a place where the Jewish community was supposedly more vibrant,” Tasat said.
After several years, Tasat helped create a new community with the founding of the non-denominational Shirat HaNefesh in 2008, where he served as rabbi.
“[The goal was] To recognize that they are different groups of Jews that interact, not only Ashkenazi, but even with Sephardic Jews, whether you come from Amsterdam, or you come from London, you come from Bordeaux, or you come from Italy, or you come from Turkey,” Tasat said.
And that passion for strongly inclusive Jewish community is something that ties into Tasat’s knack for languages, something that aids him in his singing as well.
It also comes from a family history, learning Ladino, the Sephardic language, from his grandmother as a child.
“I believe strongly that languages are a huge door to get to know people. If you go to any country in the world and you learn something like ‘Hello, how are you?’ even if you don’t speak the language, the fact that you made an effort, it changes the dynamic of the relation,” Tasat said.
Tasat no longer serves as the cantor at the synagogue after nearly 15 years, but remains connected to the area, and will be performing a musical event at Ohr Kodesh Congregation on Oct. 6 to honor the victims of Oct. 7.
