[HANASHIR:4179] Lo Alecha part 2

[Jeff Klepper <klepper...>]

Benjamin Dreyfus wrote:

>So what is the best way to set people straight when they start singing the
>"She-yibaneh..." part?  (And where did that come from anyway?)

Dan and I wrote Lo Alecha in 1973.  Later that year I was singing with the
Boston Zamir Chorale.  A fellow bass, Jerry Stern, and I started a duo
(proto-Kol B'seder?) which we called Kol Sasson. Jerry had come out of the
Orthodox youth movement, NCSY (Nat'l Conference of Synagogue Youth).  We
sang Lo Alecha at a few concerts in Boston, (along with the standard
Carlebach and Chassidic Festival tunes).  During that year Jerry went to New
York and taught Lo Alecha at an NCSY kinus at Yeshiva University. 
Apparently it caught on.    It was recorded, without attribution,  by an
Orthodox Group called Shema Koleinu in the mid-70s.  At the same time the
song Sheyibane Beit Hamikdash (I think from the  Chasidic Festival) was
pretty popular.  Somebody, somewhere, must have put the two songs together,
probably just by coincidence, and that's the folk process at work.  From
there it filtered into the Orthodox and Conservative (through Camp Ramah)
movements and then to the Lubavitch world where it came to be included at
wedding parties.  As to what to do when people start up with "Sheyibaneh",
that's entirely up to you. ;-)

Jeff Klepper

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