Hazkeni Voices: Hatikvah 'Hebraic Gospel' style

Hi folks, Shabbat Shalom and happy Shavout.

I haven't done my weekly 'get into the Shabbat groove' video in a couple of weeks. I've been way more frazzled than groovy. I'd already decided to kick it off again today when I ran into this video (courtesy of Mocha Juden, a blog and twitter feed "celebrating racial inclusiveness in the Jewish community."

The video is from the French group Hazkeni Voices. They're an interesting group, check out their bio after the video. This is them performing Hatikvah at a bar mitzvah. Rumor has it they have an album coming out in June. I'll let everyone know if I hear anything.

Gospel Meets Hebraic - HAZKENI VOICES

The Hazkeni Voices story...

"French from birth with African and Carribean roots, the members of Hazkeni Voices met while performing in gospel choirs throughout France over ten years ago. Ethel Adams and Guillaume Eyango, lead vocalists and founding members of Hazkeni Voices, were performing together at various Jewish celebrations and were introduced to the Hebrew culture by way of its music.

Ethel and Guillaume were immediately amazed by the beauty and the deepness of the traditional melodies...so full of emotions, so expressive and so simple at the same time. Singing these songs in Hebrew drove them to experience the same kind of feelings as when singing traditional gospel songs. They progressively realized how similar the Hebrew and Black communities were in regards to music--the significance of music in our spiritual lives, the way it helps in keeping the memories of the trials our people went through alive and most importantly, how music always brings us together to express our joys and our pains.

Thus was born the will to form Hazkeni Voices as a vocal ensemble based on the interpretation of hebraic traditional songs with Gospel music's feeling. They have created original vocal arrangements and new instrumentations of some of the most popular Hebrew songs.

They are about to release their debut CD in June 2009. A sincere labour of love, the fruit of a spiritual and musical crossing."

Hat Tip to YouTube user geyango for posting the video