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Posts Tagged ‘passover-music’

Sholem Aleichem’s Seder, the Sarajevo Haggadah, Moses’ Hidden Identity and Dayenu

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

Sarajevo haggadah, 'Mah nishtanah' page (Talmud.de)

For some reason, I haven’t felt motivated to write a specifically peysadika post this year. But I’ve published some interesting material in years past to which I’ll draw attention:

Sholem Aleichem’s story, Elijah the Prophet is a children’s fable about a young boy faced with a seder dilemma: if he falls asleep after drinking the cups of wine Elijah will take him away and he’ll never see his parents again. I’m proud to say that I translated this story and that it is not available as far as I know anywhere else (in English). I’m not proud to say that every Jewish publisher I’ve approached has rejected it.

A few years ago I produced a Jewish music radio program on Passover music which you might enjoy. It features contemporary Israeli, Sephardic, and American Jewish traditional and original compositions.

I wrote a post about the amazing nine lives of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

A few years ago, I also wrote this meditation on the lives of Moses and Abraham in the context of modern Jewish identity. The Moses portion of the essay, in particular, deals closely with the Passover-exodus story.

I wish you all a sweet and joyous holiday: a zisyn Pesach.

Tags: abraham, elijah the prophet, moses, passover-music, sholem aleichem
Posted in Folk & World Music, Jews & Judaism | 4 Comments »

Passover Music: Hazzan Issac Azoze’s Rhodes-style ‘Ma Nishtanah’

Tuesday, April 11th, 2006

Hazzan Issac Azoze is the emeritus cantor of Seattle’s Congregation Ezra Besarroth, a community of Jews from the island of Rhodes (or ‘Rhodeslis’ as they are known). He recorded the 2-CD Liturgy of Ezra Bessaroth in 1999. He’s graciously provided me the mp3 file I’m featuring for this post, Ma Nishtanah (hear it) or Four Questions sung in the style of the Jews of Rhodes.

Some readers may know that Seattle has a relatively large Sephardic community of 5,000 Jews. It’s reported to be the second largest such community in the country. There are two main synagogues serving the Sephardim, Ezra Bessaroth and Sephardic Bikur Cholim.

The Four Questions are usually sung by the youngest family member at the seder. They are meant to teach children the basic events that happen during the seder by distinguishing between what we do at a normal meal and what we do at a seder:

*Why is it that on all other nights during the year we eat either bread or matzoh,
but on this night we eat only matzoh?

*Why is it that on all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs,
but on this night we eat only bitter herbs?

*Why is it that on all other nights we do not dip our herbs even once,
but on this night we dip them twice?

*Why is it that on all other nights we eat either sitting or reclining,
but on this night we recline?

Hazzan Azoze’s website features more information about his professional activities and offers the CD for sale.

Tags: ezra-bessaroth, four-questions, haggadah, issac-azoze, ma-nishtanah, passover-music, seattle-sephardic-community, seder
Posted in Folk & World Music, Jews & Judaism, Seattle | No Comments »

Passover Music: ‘Baruch Hamakom,’ Dayeinu,’ and ‘Avadim Hayinu’

Saturday, April 8th, 2006

Avadim Hayinu from Hazin Haggadah (source: Richard McBee)

Tonight’s installment of Jewish music for Passover involves a shameless self-promotion. Way back when I was in graduate school at UC Berkeley in the early 1980s, my brother also happens to have been doing his PhD in chemistry at the same school. We then had the opportunity to form a Jewish music ensemble, Yasmine. We put out an audio cassette, Jewish Songs of Celebration and Struggle. As the title implies, it was a collection of politically-engaged music along with pieces from Jewish liturgy which we learned through our Jewish education.

We recorded a Pesach Suite (hear it) composed of three songs: Baruch HaMakom (“Blessed is the Place”– that is, God), Dayeinu, which expresses gratitude to God for the wonderful gifts he bestowed on the Jewish people (“If He had only given us the Torah that would have been enough”), and Avadim Hayinu, a passage from the Passover Haggadah (“We were slaves in Egypt and now we are free”). The first song is part of the Hallel, a service included in the seder and all major holiday liturgies. Dayeinu is one of those ever-popular seder songs with the terrific, joyful melody that almost everyone knows. Avadim Hayinu expresses one the central principles of the seder–that we were enslaved under the Egyptian pharaoh, but now we are free human beings whose responsibility is to celebrate our deliverance in great song and joy at the seder.

Tags: avadim-hayinu, baruch-hamakom, dayeinu, jewish-music, passover-music, yasmine
Posted in Folk & World Music, Jews & Judaism | 1 Comment »

Passover Music: Alain Scetbon’s Tunisian ‘Haggada de Pessah’

Friday, April 7th, 2006

Here’s another daily installment of my Passover music offerings. Tonight, I have a most unusual piece to present. Usually when I post about a song, I like to add a good deal of biographical background about the musicians and musical context in order to get a better sense of the song. But tonight, I have very little to tell unfortunately.

Rabbi Nessims home in Tunisian Jewish ghetto

Rabbi Nessim’s house in Tunisian Jewish ghetto (photo: Judaika.com)

Simon of Hatikvah Music recommended Alain Scetbon’s Haggadah de Pessah, which is a recording of a traditional Tunisian seder. There are no liner notes accompanying the CD. The album narration is in French and pretty sparse and there’s no narration about the particular song I chose for this post, Ya Ilana-Rabbi Nessim. In various online searches, I’ve found scant references to the record and none to this particular song.

In a mini-review in the Jewish Journal, George Robinson did say this about Haggada de Pessah:

The Scetbon…set ha[s] the intimate and slightly rough feel of an evening at a friend’s home. The music…is quite interesting, very reminiscent of Arabic music from the Maghreb

I was able to find this fascinating archival photograph of the home of Rabbi Nessim in the Tripoli Jewish ghetto. I surmise that he was a leading rabbi of 19th or early 20th century Tunisian Jewry and that the song praises him and his spiritual powers. Ilana is a woman’s name, but I have no idea what role if any she plays in this song.

Prof. Edwin Seroussi, a musicologist and director of the Jewish Music Research Center at the Hebrew University has confirmed that the song is sung in Judeo-Arabic. Unfortunately, he could not help decipher the lyrics. Judeo-Arabic is spoken by North African Jews. It’s companion language is Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) spoken by Jews whose origins are in Spain and the countries to which Spanish Jews fled after 1492.

Ya Ilana-Rabbi Nessim (hear it) is a spirited duet between adult and child male voices accompanied by the oud and rythmic hand claps. The child’s voice in particular is utterly charming. The boy sings with great gusto and passion and the oud accompaniment ornaments and embellishes the singing beautifully. Somebody tell me something about this song! It deserves to be lifted from obscurity (at least on the English language web).

For those wishing to learn more about Tunisia Jewry, Wikipedia has a fine article on the subject.

If anyone can enlighten me further on anything related to the album or song I’d appreciate it greatly.

Tags: alain-scetbon, edwin-seroussi, four-questions, haggada-de-pessah, ma-nishtana, passover-music, tunisian-passover-seder, ya-ilana-rabbi-nessim
Posted in Folk & World Music, Jews & Judaism | 1 Comment »

Passover Music: Andy Statman and David Grisman’s ‘Adir Hu’

Friday, April 7th, 2006

Andy Statman & David Grisman have recorded a rousing version of Adir Hu (hear it), traditionally sung as part of the Hallel prayer at the conclusion of the seder:

Mighty is He,
May He soon build His House,
Speedily, speedily in our days.

It anticipates the rebuilding of the Holy Temple and the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

This melody–not the traditional one with which I was brought up–was composed by the remarkable Hasidic musician and rebbe, Shlomo Carlebach. He was to Jewish music what Pete Seeger was to folk music: a fertile and fervent purveyor of spiritual Hasidism through music.

Statman and Grisman recorded the song on Songs of Our Fathers. On this album, the traditional klezmer musician, Statman and mandolin great, Grisman unite to perform traditional Jewish music. They focus on songs from the liturgy and other Jewish spiritual traditions. On this particular cut, they play Adir Hu in a medley with another tune, Moshe Emes (“Moses is True”).

Click here to read the other Passover music posts in this series.

For more information about Carlebach, visit the Carlebach Foundation site.

Tags: andy-statman, david-grisman, hasidic-music, jewish-music, passover-music, shlomo-carlebach, songs-of-our-fathers
Posted in Folk & World Music, Jews & Judaism | 1 Comment »

Passover Music: Sephardic Cantor Alberto Mizrahi ‘Sings Ki Lo No’e’

Thursday, April 6th, 2006

In 1995, a Jewish neonatologist decided that the world needed a Jewish answer to the Gregorian chant craze that was sweeping the music world at the time. His answer was Chants Mystique: Hidden Treasures of a Living Tradition. The recording features Sephardic cantor Alberto Mizrahi’s undeniably gorgeous tenor voice under the baton of Matti Lazar. While I find the recording strikingly beautiful in parts I find it strikingly annoying in other parts. The New York Times critic had mixed views of the recording. But she liked precisely the section I didn’t:

Particularly effective is the “circular chanting,” in the opening selection and elsewhere: the choristers form a circle, and their entrances are staggered to achieve an unmanicured sound close to what might actually be heard during congregational chanting in a synagogue. At other times the choral sound is seamless, but the irregularity at the beginning sets the mood.

I found these sections of “circular chanting” (blessedly there are only two examples) to be both arresting and annoying at the same time. Arresting because they come the closest to imitating or reflecting the spectral Gregorian chant “sound.” And annoying because I can’t make heads nor tails of what the singers are actually singing since they each seem to be singing something different at the same time; and I even know the lyrics!

But in the Passover seder song, Ki Lo No’e (hear it), Mizrahi returns to a more conventional cantorial style, rich and beautiful. As the Times noted:

…The finale, Ki Lo No’e (“For to Him praise is proper”), a Passover prayer set to an Eastern European folk tune, offers some rousing extemporizations by the cantor.

The melody was composed by the great Eastern European Jewish cantor and composer for Yiddish films, theater and synagogue, Moishe Oysher. Oysher derives from an Ashkenazi musical tradition. It’s an important symbol of the streams of Jewish traditions enriching each other to hear a Sephardic cantor embrace an Ashkenazi rendition of this song.

Rabbi Peretz Rodman describes the song’s musical and Biblical background thus:

[It] describes the praise of the divine king by angelic choruses. Playing on verses in Psalms (65:2, 89:12) and I Chronicles (29:11), the refrain is built of repeating one- and two-syllable words and rhymes, and is therefore simple enough for children to sing: l’kha u-l’kha, l’kha ki l’kha, l’kha af l’kha…ki lo na’eh, ki lo ya’eh.

Click here to read the other Passover music posts in this series.

Tags: alberto-mizrahi, chants-mystique, ki-lo-noe, matti-lazar, passover-music, seder, sephardic-cantor
Posted in Folk & World Music, Jews & Judaism | No Comments »

Passover Music: Western Wind’s ‘Chad Gadyo’

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

Here’s the second in my series on Passover music. Like the first entry, I’m keeping with the wonderful seder tune, Had Gayda (or as Western Wind transliterates the title, Chad Gadyo). But unlike Yehoram Gaon’s Sephardic version of the song tonight we’ll hear a version written by the famed American Jewish composer, Moishe Oysher. This is not the tune I grew up with, but I learned it as an adult and found it much more lively and musically compelling than the one I knew as a child.

So give a listen to the wonderful Oysher version of Chad Gadyo (hear it).

Click here to read the other Passover music posts in this series.

Tags: chad-gadyo, had-gadya, moishe-oysher, passover-music, seder, the-passover-story, western-wind
Posted in Folk & World Music, Jews & Judaism | No Comments »

Passover Music: Yehoram Gaon’s ‘Un Cavritico’ (‘Had Gadya’)

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

As I’ve written here, I’m hoping to do a KBCS radio special on Passover music (just waiting to get some studio time to prepare the show). I’ve decided to try to upload a different Pesach song each day between now and Pesach. Tonight, we hear from Yehoram Gaon’s seminal 1975 album of Sephardic Passover songs, Songs for Passover in the Sephardic Tradition. While the album is out of print, it is still being sold today as a two-CD set together with an album of Sephardic Shabbat songs he recorded. Gaon’s official website is quite informative, but unfortunately Hebrew-only.

Gaon was born to a religious Sephardic family in Jerusalem’s Beit HaKerem neighborhood in 1939. He received his big break when he starred in the Israeli megahit movie musical, Kazablan. He has recorded over 50 albums ever since and has remained a mainstay of Israeli popular music. With his clear as a bell beautiful tenor voice, he has charmed several generations of Israeli listeners.

Yehoram Gaon

The singer’s public embrace of his Sephardic heritage in album’s like the one we feature here did much to popularize Mizrahi culture and music in larger Israeli society. It also encouraged Sephardim to hold their head high in a culture that until that time promoted an assimilationist approach to ethnicity. Mizrahim were told their culture was backward compared to the prevalent Ashkenazi European Jewish culture that dominated Israel. Gaon helped change all that.

One of the most beloved songs of the traditional Passover seder is Had Gadya (“One Kid”):

“Then came the Holy One, blessed be He, and slew the angel of death that killed the butcher that slaughtered the ox that drank the water that quenched the fire, that burned the stick that beat the dog that bit the cat that ate the goat my father bought for two zuzim, Had Gadya (one goat). . .”

The song first appeared in a Passover haggadah in Prague in 1590. It is sung at the seder in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jews of the Talmudic period. Gaon provides a delightful and tuneful version in Ladino called Un Cavritico (hear it).

Click here to read the other Passover music posts in this series.

This is another terrific resource for more about Had Gadya. The book featured here is a lovely children’s book illustrating the song. The evocative and childlike illustrations are by Seymour Chwast and text by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld.

Tags: had-gadya, haggadah, ladino, one-kid, passover-music, seder, sephardic-music, un-cavritico, yehoram-gaon
Posted in Folk & World Music, Jews & Judaism | 2 Comments »