My knowledge of Yiddish is woefully inadequate, so I'm delighted whenever I learn a new word or phrase. Today's is Kumzitz, which according to the Urban Dictionary meaning "a happening of epic proportions." Here's the sentence in which I saw the word used... "My friend Yacov ---- is giving a kumzitz in his apartment this Motzai shabbat in Washington Heights." How great a word is that? In honor of Yacov, his kumzitz, and Shabbat here's a video of another kumzitz that will get us all in the Shabbat spirit. This one was held at the Carlebach Shul back in February and features, I think, Chassidic vocalist Yehuda Green.
"It is very common around the Lag B'Omer bonfire to have a sing-along called a kumzits (also spelled kumzitz or kumsitz). As this article describes, kumzits is an unusual word. On the one hand, it is widely known that the origin is from Yiddish for "come [and] sit". However, the word does not appear in Yiddish dictionaries. Why is that?
It turns out that kumzits is a Yiddish word that exists only in Hebrew. It was adopted by the early pioneers in Israel, despite the establishments opposition to use of Yiddish words. Hebrew replacements were suggested such as shevna שבנא - "please sit" and the Talmudic tozig טוזיג. But nothing ever managed to displace kumzits from its place beside the fire."
Hat tip to YouTube user HolyBrotha for posting a video of a kumzitz (and lots more) and to Balashon for explaining the history of the word. Balashon is a good read, check it out. Finally, just to be honest. I can' read the article that Balashon references. My Hebrew isn't nearly that good. But he linked to it and so I did to. Ignorant in public, that's me!
Can you tell I'm staying up late in another hotel cruising YouTube instead of going to bed? Anyway, here's another must see video...
"A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden was the first film to document the klezmer revival, tracing the efforts of two founding groups, Kapelye and Boston's Klezmer Conservatory Band, to recover the lost history of klezmer music. A Michal Goldman film"
A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden
This YouTube video is only a short clip of the film. You can watch a longer version (26 minutes) on the FolkStreams website or order a copy of the full thing through First Run Films.
Hat Tip to YouTube user Folkstreamer for posting the video.
"Folkstreamer" is the youtube channel for previews from www.Folkstreams.net --- A National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Cultures streamed with essays about the traditions and filmmaking. The site includes transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites. We are a group of people who are passionate about documentary films about folklife and roots culture centered around Folkstreams.net a website streaming documentary films on American folklife. Credit most of our Youtube previews to Zach Nicholls, a student at Highland School in Warrenton, VA "
Ok, the sound quality of this video is terrible. But I couldn't resist a shout out to my boys from Pittsburgh. I thoroughly enjoyed watching/listening to Teihu get their Jewish heavy metal on during this battle of the bands performance of their song "Twisted." For more on Teihu see my previous post, check out their website or their MySpace page.
Talk about retro fabulous. I've got visions of yalmakas pinned onto grooving Jewfros and that sure is a beautiful thing. JDub Records and Soulico, the Israeli hip hop group, have just released a mixtape called Archeology: A Deep Dig Into Israeli Grooves. According to JDub....
"It's an hour full of Hasidic Disco, Spirutal Soul, Yamanite Funk, Turkish Acid Rock, Arabic Jazz & much more, all recorded & released in Israel by local musicians & artists in the 70's and early 80's. 95% of the tunes were never reissued on CD and were fairly obscure even when they originally came out. This is the result of a decade of digging in Tel-Aviv's record shops & Flea markets..
chang chang bump-changity chang, di di di, chang chang bump-changity chang, di di di chang chang bump! It doesn't take much. The strumming of simple low rhythm (chang chang) under the soft keening of tight high melody (di di di). Sitting with my back against a brick wall with my headphones on, looking up with an easy vertigo as clouds extrude from the building top. chang! A whole world in a chord.
Recently I wrote about Wolf Krakowski and the idea of a music that swaps Yiddish folk melodies with blues and country licks to create something uniquely American and Jewish. I've been listening to another album that is helping to map out the possibilities of this music. Jewish Roots Music, Tzvi Gluckin, calls it. A name for an album and for a genre. This album doesn't have the crazy brilliance of Wolf's albums or the technical sophistication of Tim Sparks, but the warm dialogue between Tzvi's guitar and Jared Sims clarinet is gentle and strong. And they remind us that the possibilities for this music are endless.
I got a nice email today from the folks over at Image USA, a website for the "Sephardic community online." It seems like a nice website, with articles, community calendars, video and photo galleries and community targeted advertisements. And, best of all, they have their own internet radio station. I'm looking forward to listening in. Here's how they describe themselves...
"Image Magazine has a twenty-year history of serving the Sephardic Jewish Community. Our website, www.imageusa.com, is helping people continue to connect and enjoy the centuries' old traditions that are so dear to all of us. We have recently made our entire magazine available on our site in pdf form."
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As an added bonus, here's one of the video's that Image USA links to.
God Almighty When Will It End? Subliminal & Miri Ben-Ari
Here's a section of the (long) video description..
"This song is dedicated to the Jewish Holocaust and is part of the Gedenk movement. The Gedenk Movement (Remember!) A humanitarian campaign to raise youth awareness about genocide through art and education. Gedenk is a word that means "remember" in Yiddish. Gedenk is a movement established in 2006 as a humanitarian campaign that promotes youth education about anti-Semitism and the Jewish Holocaust.
Gedenk will use commercial outlets, i.e. music, dance, billboards and celebrities, to communicate its message and make the Jewish Holocaust relevant to today's youth. Those that do not speak up are as guilty as the criminals themselves!"
There are other histories out there, if we know how to listen for them. Other musics that remind us of how complicated, and interesting, our trip has been and how brutally the 20th century disrupted that trip. But these histories are starting to reassert themselves. We all know about the klezmer revival, and I've written many times about reassertion of Sephardic musical culture in west, the explosion in Jewish popular and art musics, and the rise of the songleader folk pop-liturgy. Guess what..chazzanut, that great voice on the pulpit, still has it's champions and they're creating a new generation of liturgy work that is vital and compelling. And they're reconnecting current chazznut with historic traditions that have all but faded from memory in America.
Erik Contzius has a new recording, Teach My Lips a Blessing, of cantorial music in the German Reform tradition. For someone growing up in a mid-20th century Conservative American synagogue, it sounds like it could be from the moon. Shabbat prayers sung over pipe organ, backed by a large mixed choir? It's a distinctive soundscape that violates Orthodox and Conservative halacha (use of instruments on the Shabbat) and my sense of history (the role of the cantor fading as community prayer practice has become communal and participatory). But that sound!
Contzius has done something magical. This isn't the mighty voiced lion of a cantor praising and supplicating as the voice of his community. It's also not a call and response prayer leader. It's something different. Contzius has a strong clear voice, without the operatic theatrics I've heard in many cantors and cantorial recordings (If anything, his voice tends toward Broadway a bit too much at points. ) It's warm and inviting, and with the choir and organ behind him feels like he's singing both for and with the community at the same time. This is a very different sensibility than a songleader grabbing a guitar to lead a hundred congregants through an out of tune Shalom Rav. (which is a wonderful thing, too). There is a sense of leadership here, Contzius reaching out through his voice, showing us the way, and bringing us along. I don't feel the urge to sing when listening to Contzius, but I feel that his singing includes me already. While I love communal singing, there is a power to this way too.
Amazon has graciously provided us with a chance to hear some clips of Contzius recording. In particular listen to V'Shamru. I've relistened to it about a dozen times. (I get to cheat. Contzius sent me the album so I get to hear the full recording). It soars, but never so high that it leaves the choir voices behind. And that's pretty special and may help breath new life into chazzanut.
You can hear more Contzius compositions, learn more about his approach, and purchase this recording via his website or download the tracks through the Amazon player.
I've been feeling a bit stodgy lately. I've been blogging about a lot of great Jewish music, but a lot of it has been serious, or at least, meaningful stuff. I've had a long week and serious stuff is not what I need right now. I need to get back to basics (my basics, at any rate). I need some music that's big, crazy, cranky, and full of life.
(My 3 year old daughter just ran through the room singing "This is not what I want, this is NOT WHAT I PLAN" from High School Musical 2 at the top of her lungs. That qualifies too. Sort of.)
Fortunately, the Teapacks fit the bill. These guys bump, shuffle, and squawk with the best of them. They remind me of when I used to go to shows all the time and would slam, pogo, and otherwise do off-kilter punk boy dances to ska bands up from New York or Washington DC. Ska bands at a punk club were a beautiful thing. We all had an evening off from glowering (musically) at and slamming in to each other. This was our fun music.
And the Teapacks have got it down. They've got the grooves and attitude, the beat and they lyrics. Listen to the lead singer Kobi Oz ranting about leaders going to push the button (see below). It's as topical today as it was 20 years ago, though the leaders are different and the button is different. And ranting about it on stage with a good band at your back is still great street theater. C'mon everyone, maybe we won't change the world (we're not hippies, y'know) but at least we can look the world in its crummy grimey face. bump bump cue the horns.
Teapacks - "Push The Button" (Israel 2007)
I love the fact that Teapacks were Israel's entry to the Eurovision last year. What a great antidote to the insipid pop that usually floods the contest. You can find out more about the Teapacks at their myspace page and their website.
Hat tip to YouTube user EurovisionAndMore for posting the video. This video was just what I needed today.
Whew. I've been on the road for work most of this week and will be again all of next week. Right now I'm stuck in the office waiting for some of my engineers to get my demo system installed on my laptop. sigh.
At least the waiting around gives me a minute to write another post. Today I want to share a video of the musician Yofiyah (aka Susan Deikman) leading an interesting form of communal devotional chanting at a Jewish Renewal event. (Sorry, I'm not sure where/when the video was shot). This particular form of chanting, which she calls Kabbalistic Kirtan is heavily influenced by Hindu rituals but adopts and adapts them for Jewish practice. This adaption/adoption reminds me a lot of how the Chassidic community has a history of "redeming" or "finding the spark" in non-Jewish music and making it holy. With the Jewish Renewal community's ties to the Chassidic community mystical approach, it's not surprising to see this sort of musical redeeming flower here as well. Here's Yofiyah's explanation of how Kabbalistic Kirtan works...
"Hebrew Kirtan is an invitation to sing to, with, and ultimately as God. This music and the experience of singing it offer you a direct encounter with God, the Source and Substance of all reality.
Kirtan is the Sanskrit word for ecstatic devotional singing using the repetition of a name or names of God. Like “om,” “mantra,” “karma,” and other Sanskrit words it has entered the English language without translation. In and of itself “kirtan” has no religious content. It is simply the ecstatic devotional singing of God’s name. When sung in Sanskrit using Hindu names for God, kirtan becomes Hindu Kirtan. When sung in Arabic using Moslem names for God, kirtan becomes Sufi Kirtan. When sung in Hebrew using Jewish names for God, kirtan becomes Jewish, Hebrew or Kabbalistic Kirtan. It is not the form that defines the Jewishness of Hebrew Kirtan, but the content.
Hebrew Kirtan is the call and response repetition of sacred Jewish text and Hebrew Names of God. These Names and short phrases are doorways through which you can encounter God. The sound of these Names and phrases, the vibrational quality they establish when chanted aloud, open the small self (mochin d’katnut) to the spacious self (mochin d’gadlut) and allow you to transcend the ego and experience the Divine."
I got a nice email the other day from someone who doesn't "know the first thing about Jewish music ... [but] and every Jewish song I've heard sounded beautiful, so I was hoping you'd let me know what to get & where to start etc?"
So, here's a fast top 10 I put together. The goal of the list was to give a broad overview of traditional styles, focusing on some personal favorites & contemporary recordings. The list was not meant to be comprehensive and short-changes lots of wonderful bands & recordings. What do you all think? What's your top 10? What would you recommend?
First, you might listen to this last.fm radio station
http://www.last.fm/listen/user/Leyele/personal
The user is a friend of mine and has great taste. You'll hear lots of great Jewish music.
Jewish music encompasses a number of different genre's, so I'll tell you a bit about the most important ones as I do my top 10 list, ok?
Klezmer - Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish music (e.g. from Russia, Poland, Germany). This is secular folk dancing music. Klezmerim were traveling musicians who played at parties and weddings. It can be very moody and dark as well.
1. I haven't listened to it yet, but the new Rough Guide to the Klezmer Revival has a nice sampling of contemporary Klezmer. http://www.amazon.com/Rough-Guide-Klezmer-Revival/dp/B0013D8JTW/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1214388866&sr=1-6
2. The band Budowitz, from x is one of my favorite contemporary klezmer groups. Their album "Mother Tongue" is marvelous. band website: http://www.budowitz.com/Budowitz/Home.html
3. One of my favorite albums of all time, Andy Statman and Dave Grisman's "Song of our Fathers" is a lovely contemporary album mixing klezmer and Jewish Hassidic songs http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Fathers-Statman-David-Grisman/dp/B000003919/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1214389080&sr=1-7 " 4. Another one of my personal favorites, Davka's Judith mixes klezmer with chamber music and gives it a wild middle eastern lilt. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_m?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=davka+judith&x=0&y=0
5. While not klezmer, Wolf Krakowski does an amazing job mixing Yiddish folk music with American roots music. This one has been in heavy rotation lately. http://www.tzadik.com/index.php?catalog=7166
A second major strain of Jewish music comes from the Sephardic Jews, whose culture was established in the 1400's in Spain and was then dispersed around the Mediterranean. The song Ocho Kalendekas that [my correspondant] sent the link to is a contemporary American Sephardic song written by Flory Jagoda, a Sephardic Jew from Yugoslavia.
6. Flory Jagoda. Jagoda is a top notch singer and musican in the Sephardic style. The rhythms of her music has a definite Balkan feel. http://www.floryjagoda.com/
7. Janet & Jak Esim Ensemble. The Esim's are from Turkey and play in a wonderful lyrical style. You can hear samples at http://www.oz-ist.com/artist.asp?id=13 and see their recordings at http://www.cdroots.com/esim.shtml
8. Pharoah's Daughter. Basya Shecter and her band play an amazing modern Sephardic music, strong in tradition buy dizzyingly psychedelic at times too. http://www.pharaohsdaughter.com/ My favorite album is Out of the Reeds http://www.tzadik.com/index.php?catalog=7187
The third major area of Jewish music is Misrachi, or Middle Eastern.
9. Ofra Haza is the queen of Misrachi music. She was an Israeli Jew of Yemenite descent. Her album Homeland Songs is my personal favorite. (more about her - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofra_Haza) You can find a lot of her albums on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=ofra+haza&x=0&y=0)
10. David Broza is an Israeli pop singer who brings together elements of Ashkenazi, Separdic and Misrachi music. His album Massada 99 - Starting to Breath is one of my favorites. http://www.israel-music.com/david_broza/massada_99_starting_to_breath/
And finally
11. Fiddler on the Roof. This is a classic American musical and is just as loved today as it was when it was first produced. http://www.amazon.com/Fiddler-Roof-Special-Topol/dp/B00005N7YZ
There are a lot of aspects of Jewish music I haven't mentioned, but hopefully these are a good start. If you find things you like, let me know and I can point you to more.
So what do you all think? What would your list look like?
I'm a Conservative Jew living in a Christian farm town in Michigan, USA. For me, Jewish music used to be Adon Olam, Hava Nagila, and Fiddler on the Roof. I started getting a clue a few years ago. Jewish music is Klezmer dances, Sephardic ballads and Chassidic niggun. It's thousand year old hymns, three hundred year old Shabbat table songs and 60 year old partisan resistance songs. It's contemporary hip-hop, punk rock, electronica, jazz, and chamber music. In addition to loving its musical and spiritual qualities, Jewish music helps me connect my family with a much broader and diverse Jewish culture than is available locally. The Teruah blog helps me document my exploration and share it with others. Why the name Teruah? Teruah is a call on the shofar on Rosh Hashanna.
Hear me interviewed on the Israel National Radio show "The Beat with Ben Bresky" Please email me about your band, event, album, blog, podcast, research or favorite Jewish music obsession. I'd love to hear it or about it.
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