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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

“Jewish Music”

I don’t know about you, but I hate when they launch into “Yidden” at a wedding, and everybody gets up and becomes a Lithuanian, clubfooted version of the Temptations.  I will admit that part of my gripe has to do with the fact that I become totally uncoordinated when I try to do line dances, and the traditional hora helps to obscure this fact.  Then again, I’ve always felt there was something unauthentic about that tune.

Well, apparently, I was right.  Recently, I received an e-mail with a link to a video on youtube.com proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that “Yidden” is not a tradition received from our ancestors. 

Now Dschinghis Khan was the winner of the 1979 Eurovision contest, and their self-titled song was an enormous smash hit everywhere in the world except the United States, so American Jews dancing to “Yidden” are understandably in the dark as to its origins.  What about Jews in other places? Our frum world, although few people would like to admit it, tends to have an only semi-permeable membrane surrounding it, so the tune got in, but no one seems to know or care where it came from.  Not long ago, I heard the inter-class bell emanating from one of the local schools; it was a section of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.

But it doesn’t end there.  The Piamentas’ “Asher Bara” is really Men at Work’s 1982 hit “Down Under”.  Mazel tov to Josh and Julie on their wedding; you don’t have to watch the whole thing)

...and Men at Work’s classic “Down Under”:

There is another “Asher Bara” out there that is a heimische version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Down on the Corner”, as well.

“Ani Ma’amin” is really “The Winner Takes it All” by Abba.  Lipa Schmeltzer’s “Abi M’leibt” is the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.  There are countless others.  I’m not talking about songs by Shlock Rock or Gershon Veroba, the “Weird Al” Yankovics of Jewish music, who deliberately adapt popular music to Jewish themes in order to convey Jewish messages.  I’m talking about the first twenty-five minutes at a chasuna you spend listening to “Jewish music” before you hear anything that can be legitimately called Jewish music.  I’m talking about those moments where you’re enjoying the delectable salmon fillet and pasta while the bride and groom are in the yichud room and you are treated to wordless, Muzak versions of Billy Ocean’s “Suddenly”, Phil Collins’s “Against All Odds”, and “Theme Song from ‘Arthur’” by Christopher Cross.  And then, just as the bride and groom emerge from their first few moments alone together, and they are about to enter the ballroom as man and wife, the band invariably breaks into Europe’s “The Final Countdown” or Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street”. 

Let the truth be known!