Matisyahu has said in interviews that he doesn't purposely sing with an accent, it just comes out that way when he sings reggae. I totally understand this because, while I daven and speak with an "o", I often find myself singing with an "oy", probably because this is how I'm used to hearing Jewish music sung. I bet I'm not the only one who does this.Oh, or should that be Oy?
Ken Jaffe writes:
Hi. I am a cantor who is finishing up a comprehensive Jewish music bibliography doing my last push before I send it off to my publisher. I ran across your blogsite and figured it couldn't hurt to ask you if you don't know of any fairly obscure Jewish composers out there who have written stage works, or other larger works on Jewish themes (oratorios, cantatas, symphonic, chamber pieces, sacred services w/a decent size instrumentalcomplement). I've pretty much looked under every rock possible and I'm just checking the proverbial pebbles before I complete the book.If anyone has any info, email me and I'll be glad to pass it along.
Reuven Halperin writes:
Hi Blog in D minor !Yitz Fuchs write:
Thank you for your Blog , it is nice to see that there is a growing culture of Jewish "folk" music .
I spend over a decade a a guitar- singer type in the Village and environs, till i ran away to do yeshiva studies for several years. I am now getting back into recording again.
I now have a website of my original songs arrange in MP3 format that i would like to share with you.
You can read all about me and the music at : Reuven Halperin
I think Matisyahu is brilliant. Rather then trying to get a gig as a frum wedding singer, which I'm sure no one would give him, he decides to become the "Hassidic Bob Marley" and now his videos are in regular rotation on MTV, VH1 etc. Now, imagine a talented frum keyboard player who never gets booked due to Jewish Wedding band B.S., and he joins a secular rock band, but refuses to work on Shabbos, and by Fri. Night, has brought back some proper parnassah to his wife and kids for Shalom Bayis, and he goes right back out to a club on Sat. Night to gig again, just for the parnassah his family desperately needs. Get it? Matisyahu, contriversial as he is, has got the right idea.He also writes:
(If not accepted in the Jewish music world, become a Jewish original. ... A Jewish Bob Marley.)
In the upcoming Psachya Septimus album, "Shattered Glass" Psachya brilliantly reinterpets and resucitates a klezmer classic from the 1930s called "Yaaleh V'yavoh" It's in D freigish, of course, and although originally written for and performed on clarined, Psachya briliantly and capably performs this piece on accordion. This album is worth buying for this song alone, not to mention the other 11 contemporary masterpieces.If it's the tune I'm thinking of, the Brandwein Terkishe Yale V'yove (transcribed in The Compleat Klezmer and Stacy Phillips Klezmer book), the tune changes scales from section to section and most of the tune is not in "Freygish".
Here's how it breaks down:
A - D altered Dorian (D Dorian with a #4) also called Misheberakh
B - D Mixolydian also called Ad-noy Molokh
C - same as A
D - same as B
E - D Freygish (G harmonic minor)
F - same as E
