Yiddish Music Goes Gypsy, Volume I

	Yiddish Music Goes Gypsy Accordion and Violin analog with authentic and colorful Gypsy synthesized orchestrations by Gypsy Fire and Soul The Balkan Romalen Ensemble  Customer Rating  Release Date: February 12, 2000 List Price: $20.00 Our Price: $15.00 Usually ships within 24 hours
This CD is full of the most popular works from the world of Yiddish Gypsy music. Several of the selections have been heard in traditional variations. I’m a Yiddishe Woman (Traditional)- This “Nigun Atik” or “Ancient Melody” is a popular Israeli wedding dance.  “Still we will return to the ancient song and the melody will linger on....Read more

On This CD

1.       I’m a Yiddishe Woman (Traditional)- This “Nigun Atik” or “Ancient Melody” is a popular Israeli wedding dance.  “Still we will return to the ancient song and the melody will linger on.  When we raise our glasses with friends, our eyes will be bright as our hearts.  How good, how good are our tents because there is dancing there!  How good, how good are our tents, still we will return to the ancient song!”  

2.       The Rabbi Wants Us to be Merry (Traditional) - This traditional melody has been sung and played at every type of Jewish celebration for many generations. Listen to the Gypsy tsimbalon (hammered dulcimer) brighten the mood.

3.       Papirossen, Herman Yablokoff (1903-1981), Yiddish theater star, actor, singer, songwriter, playwright, director and producer. He was enlisted into the Polish army as a teenager. When he finished his service, he joined a traveling Yiddish theater company in Lithuania. - Written in Kovno (home town of Dave’s great, great, great grandfather, Kolef Fichel, born in 1820), now Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1922, Herman recalls his childhood days selling cigarettes during World War I... on a cold, dark, foggy night, an orphan boy, alone in the world, calls out to “Buy my cigarettes! Dry ones, not wet from the rain… buy and have pity on me. Save me from starvation!”  When Danny first heard this melody he thought it was Gypsy.  After hearing Itzhak Pearlman’s rendition he was absolutely thrilled that he’d have the chance to put all his feelings into this melody he loved so much.  Listen to Danny’s violin cry out this boy’s story!

4.       My Yiddishe Mama, 1925, Jack Yellin (1892-1991) and Lew Pollack (1895-1946), perhaps the all-time favorite Yiddish song, dedicated to the Jewish mother… I need her more than ever now; … I’d like to kiss her wrinkled brow… I long to hold her hand once more as in days gone by, and ask her to forgive me for all the things I did that made her cry.

5.       Di Greene Kuzine, 1922, Abe Schwartz and Hyman Prizant… My beautiful country cousin, with beautiful golden hair, teeth white like pearls, and feet begging to dance, came to me from Europe… she had everything going for her but found heartache… is all that glitters gold? 

6.       When the Rebbe Elimelech Becomes So Very Merry, 1928, by American Yiddish humorist Moshe Nadir (1885-1943), a playful Yiddish version of the English song “Old King Cole.  The Rabbi Elimelech gets a little “freilakh,” (i.e., joyous, i.e., drunk), and after a while removed his phylacteries and called for his fiddlers… and then his tsimbalon players and drummers.  The song is associated with the Jewish holiday of Purim, which Jews are supposed to celebrate with such fervor that they confuse the hero and the villain of the Purim story.  Starts slow but whips itself into a frenzy. 

7.       Belz, Mayn Shtetele Belz - Alexander Olshanetsky (1892-1946) and Jacob Jacobs the young violinist left home against his parents’ wishes to join the Odessa Opera and Orchestra in 1911.  Drafted into the czarist army with the outbreak of World War I, he started writing Yiddish music when he joined a Yiddish theater troupe while stationed in Harbin.  After coming to America in 1921, he expressed his longing for his old hometown Belz, the Moldavian town in Bessarabia now called Beltsi, 60 km north of the Rumanian city of Yaas (now Iasi)… Tell me old man; tell me quickly because I want to know everything now! How does the little house look, which used to sparkle with lights? Does the little tree grow which I planted long ago? Belz, my little town! The little house where I spent my childhood! The poor little room where I used to laugh with other children! Every Shabbos I would run to the riverbank to play with other children under a little green tree.  Belz, my little town! My little town where I had so many beautiful dreams!

8.       Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen, 1880, Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908), journalist, playwright, composer, and director, opened a Yiddish theater in the bustling agricultural center of Jassy, Romania in 1877, during the Russo-Turkish war marking the near end of the Ottoman empire.  In a corner of the Bet Hamikdosh Temple, the widowed daughter of Zion sings a lullaby to her only son Yidele…  under the cradle is a white goat that will be brought to market and traded for “Raisins and Almonds”… some day you’ll be a rich trader and you will recall this pretty song… but until then, sleep Yidele, sleep.  Raisins and almonds are traditionally thrown at young children to wish them luck on their birthdays.

9.       Tumbalalaika, 1940, very popular traditional melody recorded extensively about a young man who worries all night long about which girl to marry without offending the others.  Maiden, maiden tell me true, what can grow without the dew?... What can burn for years and years?... What can cry without shedding tears?  Silly boy, I’ll tell you true!... a cherry stone (pit) can grow without the dew, love can burn for years and years, and a heart can cry without shedding tears!

10.   Medley: 

Chiri Biri Bim, folk song… when I say L’cha Dodi you answer, “Chiri-biri-bim,” and when I say Likrat Kala you answer, “Chiri-biri-bom.”  

Shein Vi Di L’Vone, 1938, Joseph Rumshinsky (1881-1956) and Chaim Towber (1901-1972), “You are as beautiful as the moon, you are as bright as the stars, you have been sent to me from the heavens, you are a gift from above.  I found my happiness when I saw you, you made my heart happy, you are as beautiful as a thousand suns.  Your little teeth are like pearls, your fine eyes, your fingers, and your hair, they all have captured me.  My head whirls, I am not myself.  I do not know what I want.  I am confused, my face is red.  I have lost my tongue; it cannot say what I want to say.  You have settled in my heart forever. How shall I tell you about it?

Bei Mir Bistu Shein, 1932, Sholom Secunda and Jacob Jacobs… To me    you are the most beautiful of all the young ladies.  Many girls have been interested in me but from all of them I have chosen you.

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