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Jewish music: Ruach
I still like the first one the best; I don't know if this is because there were more quality submissions for the very first one, or just because my tastes and theirs don't always match up. That said, there is no CD in this set that I regret having bought.
Following are some impressions from each CD.
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"Mah Tovu" by Danny Maseng is gorgeous, both in the composition itself and in his soulful performance. We've been singing this song in our Shabbat morning service for a couple years. On the strength of this recording alone, I went to a concert he gave earlier this year. I was later a little surprised to hear the recording from which this track was taken; he had a long prelude that (rightly, I think) didn't make the Ruach CD. But it's kind of neat too. (Maseng is as much a storyteller as a singer.)
"Sim Shalom" by Julie Silver is another one that we've adopted in our morning service. It's a pretty melody, and it gets points from me for using "amecha" instead of "kol ha-amim" when talking about whose wholeness this request is for. It's traditionally a prayer first for Israel ("amecha" = "your people"), though it's not exclusive; even so, some recent prayer books have changed the text to be more ecumenical and PC. It's not wrong to pray for ourselves sometimes.
"Open Up Our Eyes" by Jeff Klepper is a quiet little meditative piece. There is a follow-on melody for the Sh'ma, but it's not on this recording. (Is it his, or did our cantorial soloist find it elsewhere? If it's his, did he write it later, after this CD was published? It's a pity it's not here.)
There are other good songs on this CD too, but it's harder to articulate what I like about them.
There are two songs on this CD by Dan Nichols. (He also has two on
the second CD and one on the third.) ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
murmur311
gave me a CD of his and he does some nice stuff. He's appealing to a
younger crowd, I think; his style is more toward rock than folk. It's
mostly good stuff; sometimes words can be a little hard to understand.
(I needed the written lyrics for "L'Takein".)
There's nothing on this CD that I automatically skip.
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"Salaam / Ki Va Moed" by Rick Recht is one of the winners here. "Ki Va Moed" was written by Shlomo Carlebach; I don't know where the first part came from. This is a lively, live recording with lots of audience participation, and it sounds like this is Recht's forte.
"Halleli" by Noam Katz is perky setting of a familiar text (part of Psalm 146).
"Children of Freedom" by Beth Shafer is a song about American Jews (talking about immigrants and their descendants). I gather that it was specially written for this recording.
I usually skip "A Way to Say Ah" by Beth Shafer (nice idea, inane chorus) and "Rabbi ben Bag Bag" by Jeff Klepper (which I think of as a failed attempt at a children's song; the good ones work for adults too).
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I just got this one a week ago. It feels rather different from the other two, but that might be the newness. Or maybe it's that less of it is rooted in traditional texts?
"Am Yisraeil Chai" by Noam Katz is a Ugandan melody. It's a fun melody, which our cantorial soloist has taught a few times. This recording works well if you skip the first 15 seconds or so, which features something for which my best description is "yodeling".
There's an interesting quirk in this one: the song is Hebrew but influenced by a Ugandan native language, and in the latter all words end in vowel sounds. So you get something more like "am-e Yis-ra-eil-e chai". This is my only exposure to Ugandan music (that I know of).
"Hatikvah" by Teapacks (honest, that's what it says) is captivating. Probably my favorite track on this CD. (It did make me briefly wonder how to reconcile "stand for the national anthem" with "listen to the CD in the car". But only briefly. :-) )
Two songs on this CD were also on the Moment compilation I wrote about a few weeks ago. One is a new recording.
"Shirat HaSticker" by HaDag Nachash is a cute idea; he compiled slogans from bumper stickers into a song. But it only works if you understand modern Israeli Hebrew, which I mostly don't. The musical style on this one challenges my descriptive ability; if anyone would care to check out the short sound sample and give me a label for this, I'd welcome that. Much of it feels kind of like what rap might be if it were melodic.
I don't automatically skip anything on this CD yet, but that's probably due to newness. It feels like there is more mediocrity on this CD than on the others.
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