Wednesday, January 02, 2008

From the mailbag...

Psachya writes:
A caveat to your "It's so nice to hear a band that's not too loud" peeps: There should be a sub-category for people who tell you this during the opening cocktail hour, when you are playing at your lowest volume of the evening. They inevitably add, "We'd love you to keep it at this volume for the rest of the night." Yikes!
Albert writes:
Bonjour, A question from France: i would like to understand the first words of the song "Shnirele perele" by the Klezmatics. I understand Yiddish but cannot get the first sentance. Can you help me to find the text?
The music I have from Zlamen Mlotek translates it as "string of pearls."

E. forwards this bit o' Zionist blather.

J writes about Mustapha:
JJ did a nice take of it on his 100% album, he called it D'ror Y'ikra.
He's referring to this disc. I believe it's the track titled "Hora Yerusholayim."

Psachya comments:
Re "Mustapha" - thanks for the clip. I always wondered why Ken Gross put an "extra part" into the song. Guess I should know Ken better than that...BTW, my guess as to how this song became "Jewish" is probably through the New York/Israeli club scene of the '60's and '70's, which gave us songs like "Gino", "Rosa Rosa", "Finjan" and the like. Present-day survivors of that scene include Avner Levy, Shlomo Haviv, Gadi Bodinger and Avram Pengas. Any of the above could probably give a dissertation on the provenance of that material.