Lipa Schmeltzer's New Album: A Poshiter Yid

Lipa's new album is out. It will be fun to watch the fireworks.

Lipa's a controversial figure at the moment in the traditional Jewish communities. He's known for over-the-top songs and performances (see my post on his fabulously nutty "Oy Channukah" video) that some in on the Charedi, ultra-orthodox, side strongly disapprove of. The big stink recently was over the banning of his Big Event concert days before it was supposed to happen. This was a big deal debacle in the Orthodox / Chassidic music community and was discussed endlessly in j-blogosphere. My post on it was little more than a me-too addendum to the dialog compared to the excellent posts at BloginDm and LifeOfRubin.

So now he's back with a new album "A Poshiter Yid" (a simple Jew). Blog in Dm has already posted a great review of it, commenting that "This is a very subversive disc. The graphical elements in the packaging, marketing, and music all work together to set up the theme, Lipa the "Poshiter Yid", the simple Jew ... It's going to be difficult for the rabbonim to argue with that pseudo-modest self-assessment." and "A number of these songs are going to be in the simcha rotation this season in Brooklyn, I'd guess. My prediction: "Yomam Volayla", "Asher Yotzar", and "Hentelech" will make the second dance set at Brooklyn weddings this season."

It's going to be interesting to watch the response to the album.

Here's a short promo video for the album. You can also hear an interview with JM in the AM's Nachum Segal and listen to a 7 minute preview of the album. (Both courtesy of Chaim at the LifeOfRubin blog)

Lipa Schmeltzer's New Album: A Poshiter Yid


Hat tip to YouTube user CeeRubin aka Chaim at the Life of Rubin blog for posting the video.

Fortuna - Brazilian Sephardic Vocalist sings Shalom Aleichem

Shabbat shalom everyone,

For my weekly 'get in the Shabbat groove' video, here's Fortuna's lovely performance of Shalom Aleichem. Fortuna is Jewish Brazilian vocalist steeped in the Sephardic music tradition, which, according to her bio, she discovered on a trip to Israel in 1991. "It a was a magic moment," she says. "I felt all the beauty, sweetness and wisdom contained in these songs. It resulted in a complete turnaround in my career and also in a deeper contact with Jewish culture, religion and customs". (quote from her website) Since then, she's released a series of albums on the MCD label that both mine and preserve this tradition. This video is a clip from her Caelestia DVD and CD. In addition to her own albums, Fortuna has been features compilation albums from Putumayo World Music including "Dreamland," singing the Ladino lullabye "Durme, Durme", Tango Around the World, singing "Tango Idishe" (Yiddish Tango), and "A Jewish Odyssey", singing "Shalom Aleichem". A video of Fortuna's Tango Idishe has been posted on Vimeo, go check it out.

Fortuna - Shalom Aleichem

Hat Tip to YouTube user CRISativa for posting the video. If you liked this video, please consider supporting the artist and purchasing one of her cd's or videos.

Dona Dona - by Eva, Melle and Kris

Here's a lovely, informal, version of the Yiddish classic "Dona Dona." I don't know anything about the performers, Eva, Melle, and Kris, other than they did a lovely job with the song. This is my favorite kind of video, just a couple of folks loving a good song and reminding us of how much life this music still has in it.

"Dona Dona" was originally written by Aaron Zeitlin (lyrics) and Sholom Secunda (music) for the Yiddish musical "Esterke" in the early 1940s. The song became a favorite of the American folk revival in the 1960's has been performed and recorded many times by folks including Joan Baez, Donavon, and Theodore Bikel. You can read the full lyrics in Yiddish and English at Wikipedia.

Dona Dona - by Eva, Melle and Kris

Hat tip to YouTube user OrangeJunk20 for posting the video.

Update: Sigh. One click on OrangeJunk20's YouTube page clarified things a bit. The Kris (the guy) in the video is singer/songwriter Kris Shred.

Train De Vie - Gypsy meets Klezmer music

I just ran across this fabulous scene from the movie Train de Vie where Gypsy and Jewish peasants and musicians collide. I'm sure I've seen it before, so here's a general hat tip to whichever blog or mailing list go it first. Train de Vie is a film by Radu Mihailenau which tells the story of a fictional "small Jewish village in Central Europe [that] organize[s] a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine." (Quote from IMDB)

Jewish klezmer vs Gipsy music - Train de vie

Hat tip to YouTube user TaraDeHaidouks for posting the video.

Lori Cahan-Simon, folklorist, vocalist, and guest DJ

I've enjoyed having a Last.FM radio widget tacked on to my blog lately. Dialed to the 'Jewish' tag, it's spun a delightfully random stream of clips ranging from Matisyahu to European heavy metal band Rootwater's Hava Nagila to a Noam Chomsky lecture. But I thought I'd share the fun. I've invited critically acclaimed singer/folklorist Lori Cahan-Simon to guest DJ the Teruah radio for a while. Lori's Last.FM radio station will stream vintage and post-revival klezmer including Dave Tarras, Les Yeux Noirs, Naftule's Dream, Den Flygande Bokrullen, and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. Give it a listen and let us know what you think.

Lori's got a series of excellent albums that are well worth checking out including "Vessel of Song: The Music of Mikhl Gelbart," "Songs My Bubbe Should Have Taught Me; Volume One: Passover," and "Chanukah is Freylekh! A Yiddish Chanukah Celebration. Songs My Bubbe Should Have Taught Me: Volume Two"

Released in late 2003, Lori Cahan-Simon's "Vessel Of Song" is another fine collection of Yiddish songs by this outstanding Yiddish singer. Sub-titled "The Music Of Mikhl Gelbart", the album presents fifteen songs (two of which are medleys) by one of Yiddish song's greatest composers. Born near Lodz, Poland in 1889, the son of a poor khazn (cantor), Gelbart started writing music for a theatre group he toured with between 1909 and 1911 before immigrating to the United States in 1912. There he continued his theatrical and compositional activities, eventually also teaching singing, first at the Workmen's Circle in New York. Mikhl Gelbart died of bone cancer in 1962 and is still remembered by many of his students with great affection. He left a huge body of work that includes six oratorios, fifteen operettas, eight orchestral pieces, and settings of the works of some one hundred and twenty poets. He also published some twenty books of Yiddish songs. Gelbart's music is of a deeply folk-rooted nature and thus was often assumed to be traditional folk music of anonymous origin. The Lori Cahan-Simon Ensemble's "Vessel Of Song" presents a superb if necessarily tiny cross-section of Gelbart's vast body of Yiddish songs.

In the desire to cast off the ways of the old world and in the ashes of the Nazi death camps, most of the songs included here have been lost or forgotten by the majority of Yiddish performers. But in the first of what will presumably be a series of recordings documenting Yiddish songs for all occasions, singer/folklorist Lori Cahan-Simon collects fourteen Yiddish Passover songs and performs them with her top-notch ensemble of local and national Yiddish vocal and klezmer talent. On half the numbers, Cahan-Simon shares vocal duties with Michael Alpert, best known for his work with klezmer group Brave Old World. The instrumentalists include Steven Greenman, violinist for the group Khevrisa, cymbalomist Alezandr Fedoriouk, who has worked with jazz artist Herbie Mann and John Cale of the Velvet Underground, and Walt Mahovlich, who currently leads the East European folk group Harmonia.

A work of incalculable folkloric value, as well as an entertaining and educational tool, Cahan-Simon's CD is well-annotated with extensive background notes and complete lyrics, transliterated and translated into English. The musicianship is on a very high level, and Cahan-Simon is a compelling, theatrical vocalist, whether she is tackling the cantorial-style, rubato phrases of "Avodim Hoyinu (We Were Slaves)" or the intimate cabaret-pop of "In dem land fun piramidn (In the Land of Pyramids)" by "sweatshop poet" Dovid Edelshtadt. "Shvimt dos kestl afn nil (The Little Basket Floats on the Nile)", laced with flute by Mahovlich, has an appropriately Middle Eastern feel to it, and "Dayeynu" is rendered in an upbeat, klezmer-to-jazz arrangement. The highlight of the recording is the swinging, imaginative duet between Cahan-Simon and Alpert on "Der Bekher (Tayere Malke)". Henry Shapiro's acoustic bass keeps the tune moving at a speedy pace, and the musicans interpolate eight rollicking, traditional klezmer tunes in between the verses." -- Seth Rogovoy (Author of The Essential Klezmer), Sing Out! Magazine

Most people, if you ask them to name a Chanukah song, will tell you “I Have a Little Dreidel”, and not be able to go any further. Some will tell you the Hebrew songs “Mi Yemalel” or “Maoz Tsur”. On this recording you will find the finest Yiddish Chanukah songs I could find, including one from the earliest Yidish songbook published with melodies, from 1727, up to those written through the end of the 20th century. Also present are the original Yiddish versions of the above mentioned dreydl song and “Oh Chanukah, Oh Chanukah”. These may be the only tunes that are familiar to you, but don’t let that stop you listening. Some of you may remember these songs from when you went to Yiddish school, but I think most of you won’t know them at all. These are marvelous songs which deserve to be heard and not forgotten in a dusty book, moldering on a neglected shelf somewhere.

Diamond Days, or When Is a Jewish music fest not a Jewish music fest

I love summer music festivals. I love the 'this will never end' feeling of a whole series of bands taking their turn. I love not being able to decide which which bandstand to settle into and knowing that I'll probably duck my head into all of them. I love going to see a favorite band and coming home with three new ones, and their albums bought from kid brothers behind card tables. And meeting other fans, as we shuffle between venues or snack lines.

There is a whole series of Jewish music festivals in the US showcasing a wide variety of Jewish related music from the US, Israel and around the world. If you're near a big city, there will like be one near you and I strongly urge you to check it out. I've got a list of them started in one of the Teruah side panels. If I've missed yours, please let me know. I'm particularly delinquent on adding the Israeli and other non-US festivals. Working on it...

Ok. This brings me to Diamond Days and the question of what makes a Jewish music festival. Diamond Days is a new music fest in Oakland California in July. Its officially sponsored by Heeb Magazine and is being organized by DJ and Heeb editor Jay Diamond. Regular Teruah readers know that I'm not very keen on Heeb magazine. I'd like to be. I'd like to be excited about a magazine about young Jews being hip and clever. The problem is, I find the underlying message of the magazine to be 'you can be a hip and clever young Jew if you wear a cool Jewish themed t-shirt and hang out with one or two other hip and clever young Jews, just don't actually be serious about anything, particularly Judaism." Diamond Days is a great example of this.

Total bands playing = around 30.
Number of Jewish music (defined as loosely as you like) band's playing = 0
My opinion of Heeb = dropping like a rock

I'm not much of an investigative journalist, but I thought I'd email Jay and get the story from him. Fair is fair. If I'm going to get grumpy, he should have the chance to speak for himself. Here is, more or less, what's going on. Jay is putting on a music fest because when "I was younger, I started getting really into punk rock, and my friends and I would set up these shows for our friends bands, and bands on tour. I've just always loved the energy behind live music, and the idea of a festival has always appealed to me. "

While Diamond Days isn't primarily a fund raiser, "we are donating profits to the Ella Barker Center for Human Rights in Oakland (http://www.ellabakercenter.org) which is a wonderful organization, that I couldn't be happier to be associated with. They have a few really amazing programs which I am very supportive of, and I hope we can help get them some support. .... Diamond Day's isn't a fund raiser in the traditional sense. It's a music fest, but I try and focus on the local side of things, which I think a lot of bigger indie festivals tend to forget about. I feel like including a local non-profit like Ella barker is important to that idea of community."

So this is all good stuff and a good reasons to organize a music festival. It's the sort of thing I've always wanted to do but never did. But why did it get branded a Heeb event? "I've tried to think of ways of explaining the Jewish connection to this fest, but aside from the fact that I am Jewish, and that Heeb is a Jewish magazine the only overall Jewish things that I can take from this is the sense of community that I talked about"

Ok. But that's just not good enough for me. To me that says that Heeb magazine just doesn't get it. We're at a point when Jewish music is exploding. There are new bands announcing themselves almost daily. We've got both massive crossover artists like Matisyahu and Y-Love and great new indie bands (the Shondes). We've got an jazz scene. Sephardic music is coming alive and the classical scene is growing fast. And, of course, the klezmer revival has hit a point where I can't imagine a town in the US with any reasonable sized Jewish community not having at least one klezmer band. Jewish songleader (singer/songwriter) types are on constant tour.

But evidently none of that matters. Because, to Jay and Heeb, having a vague "sense of community" is enough. Don't worry if that community has no Jewish character. Don't worry if that community perpetuates the marginalization of Jewish culture, even in the face of it's resurgence. Don't actually be Jewish (what ever that means to you). None of that matters. Just don't forget to show up, bring a friend, and wear the damn t-shirt.

viel Herz und Gefiehl - Andrea Giani and Gefilte Fish

I was looking for my weekly pre-Shabbat "get in the mood" video when I ran across this lovely montage of Andrea Giani and Gefilte Fish. It gets partial credit in the Shabbat department for the Giani's Adon Olam segment in the middle. Giani has an amazing voice. According to her bio she "was born in Cologne. She studied Piano and Voice in her native city and at the »Richard Strauss Conservatory« in Munich...Her repertoire extends from jazz standards to French and German chansons and on to Yiddish and Jewish songs, which – with her versatile and expressive dark voice – she sings with a lot of heart and soul: »viel Herz und Gefiehl«." I'll say. The Gefilte Fish band, which includes Joe Rappaport on violin, Tobias Schwartz on upright bass, Roman Chowdhury on guitar, and Angeliki Koufou on accordion provide her just the right jazz cabaret feel to support her without overwhelming her or loosing their own identities. I particularly loved Koufou's accordian playing.

This video seems to be songs recorded on the Gefilte Fish album "Sol Sejn" available as an import through your favorite music store or online at Amazon, CD Universe, or Tower Records. According to the YouTube notes "These recordings/filming took place at ODEON studios Athens Greece January 28 2007 for David Nachmias' show TIMIS ENEKEN (Under the auspices of Greek National Television ERT)"

GEFILTE FISH Jiddische Lieder Kompilation (Athens recording)

Hat tip to YouTube user "Kombothekras" for posting the video.

David Fagin interviewed by The Jewish Television Network

It's one in the morning and I've worked late every night for the past week. Two research grant proposals out the door and the presentation for tomorrow's funders review all done (well, done enough to go to bed.) sigh. Anyway, I've got just enough energy for a quick cut & past post.

From the YouTube video notes:
"David Fagin founded the NYC pop quartet, The Rosenbergs. That wasn't enough so he joined Rob Tannenbaum to produce music that was "Good for the Jews". Still not satisfied he just completed work on his first solo effort, "For Promotional Use Only."

The Rosenbergs' David Fagin One-on-One


Attentive readers may remember my excitement over the "Good for the Jews" video "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat." If you haven't heard it, do it now. Then learn it by heard and sing it at your next Passover seder, bris, or simcha of choice. You can find Fagin at his website and his myspace page.

Hat tip to the Jewish Television Network for posting this video.

Jewish Music: Contexts and Categories

Sorry folks, no music this time. I just wanted to pass along an interesting email exchange I recently had with Eva Heinstein of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She works on the Thesaurus of Jewish Music and maintains their blog, Jewish Music Research. She wrote to me let me know about their website and we got to talking about Jewish music. Go figure. I posed her a question that's been bugging me and got an interesting reply. Here we go...

JACK: "I'm wondering if you or one of your colleagues might be able to set me straight on a music theory question that has been perplexing me. One of my observations studying and writing about Jewish music is that it is very diverse, but in relatively systematic ways. It's easy, for example, to categorize Jewish music by geography region or temporal period, for example. It's also (usually) easy to make gross genre comparisons (e.g. a klezmer doina vs a Ladino love song). There is another set of comparisons that I typically make but that I lack good terminology for, the distinction between the contexts in which a composer expects the musical work to be performed. For example, a musical setting for the liturgical piyot might initially be intended for vocal performance in concert setting, then get adopted into a communities shul-based Kabbalat Shabbat service, and then get re-arranged as performance piece by a rock band. As noted, I could describe the shift as "art music" to "liturgical music" to "popular music" or "choral" to "liturgical" to "rock." Those are meaningful comparisons but seem to miss the point. The big comparison that I see is the shift from a performance context to a practice context back to a performance context. Not being well grounded in musicology, I struggle with terms. Is "context" an appropriate term? If so what kind of context categories have been recognized?"

EVA: As for your question, I thought immediately about a paper that was presented at a conference in London last year. Suzel Anna Reily presented a paper, which examines whether the traditional musicological categories of folk, art and popular music still apply. While you are also speaking about liturgical and para-liturgical performance contexts, I think the idea behind the paper very much speaks to your question.

The head of the department here at Hebrew University, Professor Edwin Seroussi, speaks about the blurring of contexts and categories in musicological research often in his seminars. I read a paper of his recently that follows the "journey" of one Judeo-Spanish romance "Las Horas de La Vida" from its original folk contexts, to research anthologies, to commercial recordings, and back again. In the paper, he essentially tries to tease out how the folksong became one of the most performed and recorded pieces in the Judeo-Spanish repertoire. What becomes clear is that the categories of art, folk, research and commercial overlap and influence one another greatly. So, I think you are right in feeling that there is movement between contexts or categories, and that the traditional categories are too stringent for the kind of musical phenomena we see today (maybe they were always too stringent?).

I think your sense of performance versus practice contexts is generally understood in scholarship as art versus folk or popular categories. However, we know today that just because music is performed on stage, doesn't make it art music. Likewise, just because music is performed in a communal or family context doesn't necessarily make if "folk" or "popular." So again, I think we come back to the same problem of overly-simplified categories that no long really apply to the varied and multiple contexts in which the same musics (or variations of the same music) are performed.

So what do you folks think? What kinds of categories and contexts make sense to you?

Eva also provided this set of useful pointers in the ethnomusicology field. This is an area where I know nothing and need to get a bit smarter.

Journals:
1)Ethnomusicology the Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology
2) Ethnomusicology Forum (formerly British Journal of Ethnomusicology) published by Routledge
3) Yearbook for Traditional Music published by the International Council for Traditional Music at Columbia University
4) Popular Music published by the Cambridge University Press
5)Musica Judaica the Journal of the American Society for Jewish Music
6) Israel Studies in Musicology the journal of the Israel Musicological Society\
7) Yuval (our journal!) published by the Jewish Music Research Centre (There is also the Yuval Music series which publish musical anthologies on different areas of Jewish musical traditions).
8) Not sure how your Hebrew is, but דוכן is an important Jewish music journal published by the Rennanot Center for Jewish Music in Israel

Books/Authors:

A short list:

John Blacking's How Musical is Man? and Music, Culture & Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking. He was a very important thinker and founder of the discipline.

Bruno Nettl's The Study of Ethnomusicology. An important book that deals with definitions, methodologies, and a number of central issues in the dicipline.

Kay Kaufman Shelemay. She is the head of the department of Musicology at Harvard, and a very impressive academic. Her writing is delightful, and she has done a lot of work with Jewish music (Let Jasmine Rain Down is her study of the musical traditions of the Syrian Jewish Community in Brooklyn). She put out an annotated collection of articles dealing with core definitions and the scope of Ethnomusicology titled Ethnomusicology: History, Definitions, and Scope.

Mark Slobin. Has published a number of studies on Jewish music revival movements, particularly the Klezmer revival movement. He always approaches his case studies with more fundamental questions about music making, culture, religion, and identity. His writing is very thought provoking.

If you are looking for information on a specific ethnic music the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music is a great resource. It includes ten volumes, each focuses on another area of the World

Other helpful Websites:

1) Grove Music: You might already be aware of Grove Music Online, you need a subscription, but most libraries have access to the online version. The URL is www.grovemusic.com. In addition to information on specific composers and genres, it has some great articles on bigger ideas and questions from a musicological perspective (for example there is a great article written by Richard Tarushkin on Nationalism and Music)

2) Milken Archive of Jewish Music: http://www.milkenarchive.org/. You have probably also come across this website, but if you haven't, it is a great resource. Lots of bio's, interviews, recordings etc...

3) The Molly and Robert Jewish Sound Archive Website: http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/freedman/ An amazing database that includes thousands of Jewish music recordings.

4) Brown University Yiddish Sheet Music Archive http://dl.lib.brown.edu/sheetmusic/yiddish/. A great website with full Yiddish music scores scanned in, and a lot of great general information about Yiddish theater music and research.

Conferences/Lectures:

1) Jewish Music Forum Lecture Series http://www.jewishmusicforum.org/. A very interesting lecture series that covers a wide variety of topics in Jewish music research. I was able to attend a few while I was a student in NYC, and I enjoyed them tremendously.

2) World Congress of Jewish Studies http://www.jewish-studies.org/. Next year it is going to be at Hebrew University. There are always papers submitted on Jewish Music, many of which can viewed in full text through Lekket the Web based collection of Jewish studies articles: http://www.jewish-studies.org/ShowDoc.asp?MenuID=60

Thanks Eva, I really appreciate the discussion and pointers!

"The Jewish Songbook" according to Adam Sandler, Jason Alexander, Barbra Streisand, Neil Sedaka, Rob Schneider, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog?

The music publisher Shout! Factor specializes in repackaging and reprinting old albums for new audiences and putting together odd themed various artists collections to appeal to niche audiences. This time the niche audience is, well, us. They recently released the album "The Jewish Songbook: The Heart and Humor of A People" which includes "11 Brand New Recordings From Today's Top Entertainers!" and "wholeheartedly documents the creative richness of Jewish culture." Whew. Gotta get me some of that wholeheartedness!

Ok. I've had my fun teasing the marketers. Yes, it's an odd collection of performers. Last time I checked Adam Sandler, Jason Alexander, Barbra Streisand, Neil Sedaka, Rob Schneider, Manhattan Transfer, and the inimitable Triumph the Insult Comic Dog are not top shelf Yiddish talents. (Ok, Babs is queen of anything she does). I just mean if you wanted to put together a sharp sounding album of Jewish musicians, this wouldn't be it. But Shout! Factory specializes in gathering up ex-A list and hopeful B and C list talents for projects like this.

And, truth to tell, I think it works. From the clips I've heard (Amazon has samples of the albums tracks) even Triumph the Insult Comic Dog comes out sounding pretty good. It's mostly jazzy uptempo arrangements of Jewish standards with a heavy focus on Yiddish material (My Yiddishe Momme, Raisins And Almonds, you get the idea). Theodore Bikel's "Sabbath Prayer" comes right out of Fiddler on the Roof. I have to give credit to Adam Sandler, though. Instead of taking the more expected comic turn, he picked "Hine Ma Tov" and gives it a very credible presentation.

So bottom line ... this isn't an album I'm likely to run out and buy. I listen to way to much top quality Jewish music to want to throw this disc on. But I'm not really the niche market Shout! Factory is going for. They're going for my brothers, who might dig hearing Adam Sandler getting his Jew on, or my dad who might still be holding a candle for Streisand after all these years. In other words, they're going for the niche market of typical American Jews who only are vaguely connected with Jewish music (or Judaism for that matter). That's a pretty big market and I expect this album to do well.

Heck, I might buy a copy or two for my brothers. I think they really would dig hear Sandler sing Hine Ma Tov."

To help promote the album, the Shout! Factory gang put together this little promo video. Thought I'd pass it along. Don't be fooled by the title, though. There's nothing "behind the scenes about it." Just some of the artists chatting for the camera.

The Jewish Songbook - Behind The Scenes


Hat tip to the Klezmershack mailing list for letting me know about the album.