New Album Spans Generations and Oceans:

Ariber Di Shotns/Crossing the Shadows by Josh Waletzky

Reviewed by Dena Ressler

After an Erev Shabes meal this summer, I found myself, as many have at various Jewish gatherings, sitting around tables pushed together so that people could sing nigunim and zmiros and Jewish songs.

Always a pleasant experience, for me this turned into an extraordinary one. Josh Waletzky offered a song about Shabes that sounded old and European to me. I asked him how old it was and where it was from. He told me that he'd written it!

The song, Shabes Koydesh /Holy Sabbath is one of the pearls found on Waletzky's recently released CD Ariber Di Shotns/Crossing the Shadows.

You may be familiar with Waletzky's other work - he is an accomplished film director and producer ("Partisans of Vilna," "Image Before My Eyes,") and editor ("In the Fiddler's House" featuring Itzak Perlman) and a founding member of one of the first klezmer revival groups, Kapelye - but this is his first solo album.

The album is important not only because it represents the work of one of only a handful of living artists writing a body of Yiddish lyrics, not only because the music is original and unique, but simply because the compositions are simply beautiful!

All 14 of the cuts are originals. Three of them are instrumentals, the rest vocals. They do not fit neatly into the usual Yiddish, Jewish, klezmer or even popular American forms.

The spirit of Waletzky's music is both old and new. He has succeeded in capturing a quintessential Yidishkayt in both the religious and cultural meanings of the word, and he also shapes a new-world sensibility with his compositions. He does this on musical and textual levels, with a sound unique to him but with many allusions to various Jewish musical traditions.

For example, let's return to Shabes Koydesh. At first hearing, the song sounded traditional, perhaps Hasidic. But on closer analysis, it is both old - the words could have been written 200 years ago. There are beautiful harmonies - traditional in Jewish singing. At the same time the song sounds contemporary - the musical structure is complex and modern: at the beginning of the song three singers sing for half a minute; the tempo is 3/4. The tempo then changes to 2/4 for another half minute. Then, the refrain becomes a slightly faster 2/4, fitting the admonishment to lomir freylekh zayn (let's be happy!) It's not way traditional or even modern songs are shaped.

The melodies, the music, and the composition are all oysergeveyntlekh sheyn (extraordinarily beautiful) and quite interesting. The melodies are catchy - inviting one to sing along and harmonize. Once again, the forms are not just your run-of-the-mill stanza and chorus. For example, in Sholem-Toyb/Dove of Peace, there are two refrains, one Biblical/Hebrew, one Yiddish; they are not always sung consecutively. The instrumentals, especially, can be likened to miniature symphonies, both in structure and in musical arrangement.

There are both old and new musical elements that make this so. All (or most) of the melodies are in natural minor vs. the freygish or misheberak modes one often finds in Yiddish song. Many of the songs start out with wordless singing - not usual in Yiddish or non-Yiddish songs, but very common, of course in Hasidic nigunim. As mentioned above, the structure of the songs are not routine, but there is a venerable Lubavitch tradition of multi-sectioned songs constructed to correspond to different spiritual levels.

The subjects of the songs are also both old and new. Tantsn Kales (Brides Are Dancing) is about a modern subject - a reluctant bridegroom. The story is told with traditional words and semi-modern images (brides dancing around him as in a dream sequence from a Yiddish film from the '30s) and the song ends in the traditional khusn-kale mazl tov! Ireland, 1998, rejoices at the peace accords there, framed in images of Noah's ark. Der Nisnboym/ The Nut Tree is an old-fashioned Jewish vig lid (lullaby) where the child's growth and independence is set among a nest, tree, and the moon which recalls the classic Yiddish song "afn veg shteyt a boym". There is a moving song to Waletszky's late father which simultaneously invokes his personal loss and his connection to Jewish history: "so take my pain and take my joy, and hammer my link into the golden chain" [the classic Jewish chain - goldener keyt]. ("iz nem mayn layd un nem mayn freyd un shmid mayn ringl arayn in goldener keyt."

Waletzky has chosen two of the best klezmer musicians on the scene today to accompany him - Deborah Strauss and Jeff Warchauer. Strauss's violin is perfect: haunting, mournful, playful, and singing in turn. For instance, Tantsn Kales opens with a breath-taking violin solo that is in the tradition of the playing that used to cause our great-grandmothers to swoon at weddings.

In Der Nisnboym/The Nut Tree lullaby, the violin enters softly after a long voice solo, and then accompanies the voice in soft harmony, a perfect complement it.

Warchauer, too is able to invoke all sorts of moods with his mandolin, guitar, and percussion. In Eyns un Tsvey/One and Two, the mandolin is melancholy; in Der Tom/The Abyss, he plays a regal klezmer/Romanian jok/hora (dance in 6/8) which, at the same time, reminiscent of Spain.

Waletzky's piano playing is also notable. It took me several listenings to Tantsn Kales before I realized that he was accompanying Strauss, so unobtrusive and subtle is his playing. On the other hand, in the instrumental Der Tats/ The Cymbal, the piano is quite percussive and energetic.

Waletzky is a true poet; the words to his songs can stand by themselves. They take one's breath away; bring tears to one's eyes; make one smile...

Don't pass over this CD just because you don't understand Yiddish. The music is wonderful - and English translation and Yiddish transliteration stand alongside the Yiddish oytses/letters on each pair of pages in the notes - so you'll know the meaning of the words. And if you know some Hebrew, you will find many Yiddish words of Hebrew origin in the songs. This is another perhaps unintentional device that makes the songs traditional since it invokes old Yiddish which is itself routinely invoked the Bible.

The CD is available at Brookline's two Judaica stores, and on the web at http://www.yv.org. or http://www.crossingtheshadows.com .

Dena Ressler is a lover of Yiddish music and language and a klezmer clarinetist.