Yanni

[Sam Weiss <samweiss...>]

In his posting on Aderet's "Mostly Music" store in Boro Park,
<ro (at) panix(dot)com> wonders:

<<And, for reasons I cannot fathom - maybe someone can help me out here, 
they have Yanni.  No, they don't have any other "new age" kinds of 
artists, aside from an odd spacey piano treatment of some Chabad 
nigunim.  And you know what else is strange?  The Judaica shop in the 
Wesley Hills shopping center up in Monsey (which also has a great stock) 
carries Yanni too.  What am I missing here?>>

The instrumentals by Yanni have been absorbed into the Frum culture as 
perhaps the only form of overtly non-Jewish music deemed kosher and 
useful for general consumption.  This did not come about by fiat, but is 
a long-standing de facto phenomenon.  Yanni's pieces are short, 
rhythmic, melodic (so to speak) and without any human voice or semantic 
connotations.  Thus his music is incorporated into school plays 
presented in girls' Yeshivas, used to choreograph that community's 
ever-increasing repertoire of dances, used as backgrounds for choir 
productions, taught to piano/keyboard students by private teachers, 
heard on telephones while on hold (when the proprietor wants to project 
a "modern" image of his business), etc. 
In fact, a couple of his latest selections have fallen off the kosher 
list since they include some female vocals (albeit without words). 

This development seems to represent the women's toehold in the popular 
music industry that serves the Yeshivishe community -- in contrast to 
the "by women for women" recordings and concerts which have a much more 
restricted function. 

______________________________________________________
Cantor Sam Weiss === Jewish Community Center of Paramus, NJ

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