Re: Mandy Patinkin's Yiddish album

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

>Ari,
>   You write that the new Mandy P. album is not your kind of album.  It is
>so bad that it can't be anyone's album.

I dunno, Elaine. This is one of the rare albums that people came
up to me to talk about at various Jewish and Yiddish events,
all of them excited about it. Sometimes I'll be standing with 
friends and realize that a group nearby is discussing it with
excitement. I can try to look at why it might have meaning, or 
why it might offer pleasure, and I can (and have) talked with a 
couple of people involved with it. Regardless, of what I think I 
understand, there are a lot of people for whom it is bringing a lot 
of pleasure (including the reviewer who wrote about the album on my 
klezmer shack website).

Maybe "bad" isn't the word that matters here. Maybe the question is
what it is about the album that causes some people to enjoy it so
much? I've speculated on some of the factors in previous messages, 
but I've also noted that I'm working at a distance.

And, I have come to really like "Take me out to the ballgame" in
Yiddish, despite myself. It instantly takes me back to the world
of my grandparents and how they described the things that mattered
to them, and to their feelings about America. But that's me and
my family.

ari

Ari Davidow
The klezmer shack: http://www.well.com/user/ari/klez/
owner: jewish-music mailing list
e-mail: ari (at) ivritype(dot)com