Where have all the bubbes gone?
With the Yiddish-speaking generations now largely of blessed memory, Yiddishkeit is no longer the province of grandparents. It belongs to a younger, more energetic generation determined to inject some steroids into a withering culture and make it thrive again. And in some cases, to make it sing.
That explains in part the renaissance in klezmer and Yiddish music seen over the past 20-plus years. Record labels have noticed the trend, and today countless Yiddish music CDs are available.
“Celebrate Yiddish,” from producer Craig Taubman’s series, is a decent compilation with a few priceless gems thrown into the mix to make it worthwhile.
The recordings on “Celebrate Yiddish” span 60 years, and include such leading figures as Theodore Bikel, Chava Alberstein and the Klezmatics. Most such samplers suffer from a lack of musical cohesion, and this one exhibits a bit of that ill-advised eclecticism. However, with so many strong performances, the collection as a whole serves to showcase the range of Yiddish music past and present.
Among the best tracks is “Mirele,” co-written and performed by the great Israeli chanteuse Alberstein. Her smoky vocals extricate Yiddish from the realm of the neutered yentaspeak and straight into a vibrant, sexy present. Also sensational, Brave Old World’s rendition of “Klabyt Zihn Tsunof,” a Bulgarian-flavored march sung by Michael Alpert, a Yiddish music scholar and world renowned performer who speaks the language like a native.
Some of the CD’s tracks are actually
vintage recordings, such as Bikel’s version of “Hulyet, Hulyet Kinderlech,” which sounds amazingly clean for 1959, and the straight-up piece of shtetliana “Rabeynu Tam” by Isa Kremer (1887-1956) that also features the accompaniment of legendary klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras. Other tracks were not only recently recorded but actually newly written, proving the Yiddish revival isn’t just about resurrecting old songs.
Among other excellent tracks on the CD, the slyly humorous “Tikhiyes Hameysim” from Chassidic pop singer Avraham Fried, Wolf Krakowski’s hip version of the folk song “Dona Dona,” which here takes on a Dire Straights flavor (except for the accordion and mandolin, of course). “Drey Dreydele” by the Hungarian band Di Naya Kapele is another winner, a Chanukah tune set to a stomping Gypsy arrangement.
New York-based chanteuse Adrienne Cooper does justice to the mournful waltz “Di Krenetse,” a song written in the ’30s by a composer later murdered by Josef Stalin. The ever-innovative Klezmatics turn in “Barikadn,” which interweaves evocative samples in a lusciously noisy arrangement.
Then there’s Nekhama Lifshitz’s smoldering rendition of “Das Freylekhe Shnayderl,” another traditional tune made new here.
Not every track works. Seymour Rechzeit, the self-described “Perry Como of Jewish Radio” who died in 2002 at the age of 90, may be worthy of respect as a pioneer, but his version of “Belz” is simply too cornball to stand the test of time. We’re talking bad-Jewish-wedding-band cornball.
Another problem with the CD is the lack of translated and/or transliterated lyrics. Part of the fun of the Yiddish renaissance is picking up a few words here and there, a task made much easier when listeners can sing along by reading the text. Maybe next time.
With producers like the Klezmatics’ Frank London and Craig Taubman involved, “Celebrate Yiddish” was guaranteed a healthy measure of integrity and class going in. There is probably much more Yiddish music still to be mined in the years ahead. If these guys keep their hands in it, then fans of the genre will have plenty to cheer about.
“Celebrate Yiddish” (celebrateseries.com, $15).