Jewish Music:Then And Now

This may be of interest to my 3.5 Jewish readers.

Few days ago Venus mentioned klezmer-punk band Golem in one of  her posts. I looked up few of their videos and one song sounded vaguely familiar:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze6ONmmBBbA

This is their take on the famous Yiddish song Rumania, Rumania originally composed and performed by Aaron Lebedeff. It just happened that the same day I was watching  “The Komediant”  – a documentary about a world famous Yiddish actor Pesachke Burstein. The movie mentioned that his son – Mike Burstyn grew up among famous Jewish performers and that Aaron Lebedeff himself taught Mike to sing “Rumania” while he was still in the stroller. The DVD included this version of “Rumania” performed by Mike Burstyn and Bruce Adler:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISC9f6emB_c

You can pick your own favorite, personally I didn’t care for the punk version. Not everything can be punked up.

If you made it this far, here is a bonus list of words that you may have heard before but didn’t know where they came from. By the way, the word “Shrek” means “monster” in Yiddish.

But wait! If you made it this far you must really be a fan of Yiddish and Jewish music. Enjoy:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vAMgbGEDTY