Re: Quality frum music??

[mkirschb <mkirschb...>]

>I've been listening to a number of 'frum' tapes recently, largely frailachs
>music and haven't been terribly impressed by the creativity or originality of
>what I'm hearing. Some of the tapes I have heard have been by Gershon Veroba,
>Werdyger, Regesh (forget which one), Ira Heller, Deveykus and Mordechai Ben
>David. The pickins seem pretty slim to me.

        The "pickens" are pretty slim.  The problem with this stuff is that
it takes as it's goal to be "safe" and "unchallenging", in contrast to the
real Hassidic music of previous generations, which was meant to be
difficult, meditational, and transcendant.  Some reccomendations of
commercially available recordings demonstrating this:
1.  Any of the 5 cassettes put out by Ben Zion Solomon.  Ben Zion was the
multi-instrumentalist who was the "other" half of the Diaspora Yeshiva
Band, and quit when he wanted to do more substantive material than the soft
pop they were playing.  He has a masters in ethnomusicology and started
doing field recordings of old Breslov hassidim, then recorded them
faithfully in terms of the singing and rhythm, but using his midi created
some rather interesting arrangements.  They are sold as "Rebbe Nachman's
songs" and are at times fairly avant-garde (one of his experiments got him
into trouble- on the track Ashreinu, he tried to musically represent an
ecstatic experience using a phase shift similar to that in "a day in the
life", and people were returning the tape, thinking there was a mistake.
It is brilliant, though, and worth hearing).

2. The Dzikov folks in Israel have two remarkable cassettes of their
traditional songs, including a sublime but singable "Eshet Hayil".

3. A seasonal favorite- the best Hanukkah tape around is the Vizhnits
Hanukkah tape, which also sports some nice arrangements from Hanan
Winternitz, giving it that Russian Sleigh in the snow sound.

4.  The early Belz tapes are pretty good, even if there is a lovely
ethnomusicological joke there for the cogniscenti...

                                   mark h kirschbaum, m.d.
                                   mkirschb (at) fred(dot)fhcrc(dot)org

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