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Leonard used to open concerts on is European tour of 10 or 15 years ago with a
familiar Yiddish song, "Und As Der Rebbe Zingt (or something close to that).
Marty Grossman
Hayyim Feldman wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, robert wiener wrote:
>
> >I don't believe that I knew about the Miriam Makeba version of "Where
> >Can I Go?" -- maybe someone can fill us in.
>
> The World Of Miriam Makeba, RCA LSP2750, 1963.
>
> >But I did know about the Leonard Cohen "Who By Fire" quoted below your
> >post. Are there any other Leonard Cohen recordings that might
> >interest us? Anything less common, especially in French? In fact, I
> >think that I came across something in a museum in Montreal or Quebec,
> >but it might have been from a private recording and I don't remember
> >more.
>
> The only thing I know of by him in French is Je Veux Vivre Tout Seul, an
> unrecorded concert version of Bird on the Wire. He recorded the Quebecois
> song Un Canadien Errant - with a mariachi band! - a good choice for
> whoever it was here doing a program on songs of exile awhile back. He
> also recorded The Partisan (Anna Marly/Hy Zaret) in English and French,
> and has performed Die Gedanken Sind Frei in German and English.
>
> What's less common depends on what one is (less) familiar with {:^). If
> you want something like a list of his songs of Jewish interest, I could
> try to do that. For explicitly Jewish material on a single album, I'd
> recommend Various Positions. But really, I think most LC recordings
> should interest us. He's a treasure of contemporary Yiddishkeit for
> secular or religious Jews, as his fans Jew and gentile know (hamaskil
> meyvin), but the Jewish communal world seems oblilvious to him.
>
> Read his little collection of 50 prose psalms, Book of Mercy (McClelland &
> Stewart, 1984). I don't know of anything else, by anyone, that is at once
> so profoundly traditional and so completely contemporary. Here's the
> first:
>
> I stopped to listen, but he did not come. I began again with a sense of
> loss. As this sense deepened I heard him again. I stopped stopping and
> I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance.
> This was a strategy and it didn't work at all. Much time, years were
> wasted in such a minor mode. I bargain now. I offer buttons for his
> love. I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields. Haltingly he moves toward his
> throne. Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing.
> In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, the court is established
> on beams of golden symmetry, and once again I am a singer in the lower
> choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.
>
> -Hayyim
--
Julia Becker Grossman
841 Solano Avenue #2
Albany, CA 94706
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