Visit to Amuka and the Making of Kaddish

Amuka, in northern Israel, is the gravesite of Rabbi Yonathan ben Uziel, one of the greatest students of Rabbi Hillel from 2000 years ago. I was there with three friends. An Ashkenazi, an Ethiopian, and Pincus, dressed in a dusty, black coat and kippah, covered with soot from head to foot and wreaking of pure kindness. He was a total tzaddik, or holy man, reminding me of Eliyahu ha Navi, the angel and prophet, frequently disguised as a beggar.

Except for us, the place was completely deserted. It was dusk, time for arvit or mincha, evening prayers, and my companions complained about being short six men for a minyan. We were only four and ten is the necessary quorum in our tradition. Pincus leapt upon a rock and began, “If you have faith, then we will have our minyan!” he exclaimed. "Emunah!" he cried. I looked up at the road leading to Amuka and saw a desolate site among the trees. There was nothing… nothing, only trees. Where this minyan was going to appear from was certainly a mystery to me. We went inside the small building there in the wilderness, which housed the tomb of the great sage and began our prayers.

Somewhere in the middle of what we were doing, I heard a noise outside and poked my head out the door. I saw a car gradually winding its way down the hill through the trees. When it got to the parking lot, completely empty except for our car of course, the doors opened and one by one, six guys piled out and headed our way. We were four, combined with their six, there was our minyan!

Pincus lost all control. He started jumping up and down and dancing, singing. He was the happiest man on the planet. “See? I told you to have faith!” Moments later, another car appeared with more men. And then another. Lots of minyans. In fact, by the end of all this, three busloads had shown up, full of people visiting Amuka, the women lighting candles, so many that it turned into a bonfire.

The acoustics sounded so good in that little stone building that I whipped out my trusty recorder and got the Ethiopian guy reciting Kaddish. It turned out to be the first of many sound samples I was to use in the track I ultimately called Kaddish. Eventually I was to gather many other samples of this prayer but this was the first and would be followed by Hungarians, Moroccans, Persians, Yemenites, the Sephardim from the Abu Hav synagogue in Tzfat, all recorded over a two-year period. Miraculously, when I assembled the recorded samples I was to use in the song, they were all in the same key, only one of them being off by mere semitones! What are the chances of that?

I spent a month in the studio, putting all the pieces together and adding caxixi (basket shaker), balalaika, beats, and more percussion from Tim Bolling.

Kaddish is on the "Change The World With A Sound" album and is still one of my favorites. Listen to it here.

Recording Adir Hu

When I got to Israel, I played a lot of weddings as a guitarist/sideman, particularly in Jerusalem. Often the material consisted of Reb Shlomo's songs and that's how I learned many of them. One of the most popular was "Adir Hu." It's from the holiday of "Pesach" or Passover. Oddly enough, it's very un'Shlomo sounding as it has a distinct Sephardi or Mizrachi sound to it. The section that sounds most like Reb Shlomo is where everyone yells, "Kel Bnai!"

I was recording at the studio of Dan Gil, the Gearer Rebbe. Dan is called the Gearer Rebbe because he knows a lot about musical gear and is infatuated with it. He had just acquired a Turkish saz, sometimes called a baglama. I was at the studio for a few days and Dan kept telling me about the saz and how I should play it on the new album. "I don't know how to play saz. I don't even know the tuning," I replied. He persisted and as soon as he handed it to me, I strummed it and knew it would be perfect for something. The Gearer Rebbe is a wise man. I loved the sound of that saz.

"Adir Hu," at least for a westerner, is exotic to begin with so that seemed like the right tune to choose for the saz. I used some of the strings as drones and although I have no idea whether or not that's part of the method of playing, it sounded good. I played a track. I even laid down a 2nd track and both sounded really good together. On the recording you can hear the second saz enter after a verse.

Eventually I went back to Israel and was listening to the tracks. Although they stood well on their own, I wanted to add a few more things. I was just having too much fun with the song and didn't want to stop. I had made a stop in San Francisco on the tour before returning to Israel and went to one of my favorite music stores, Clarion Music. It's a wonderful place in San Francisco's Chinatown to explore non-Western instruments. I first discovered it in the mid-90s, with our percussionist, Cassio Duarte. We were in San Francisco to play Great American Music Hall and Cassio heard about this store so we went there and emerged hours later. Both of us were like kids in a candy store. I got a dolak from Pakistan and used it shortly afterward on "A Narrow Bridge" or "Kol Ha Olam Kulo" in Hebrew, on my Fringe of Blue album.

On this visit, in 2009, I was in Clarion Music with my brother, Scott and his son Steven being tourists. I left with a jaw harp and some hand percussion from Viet Nam and China. When it came time to record the additional material for the song. I used my mobile recording studio in Israel and pulled out these new toys of mine and rolled a few tracks. It certainly had an unusual sound and to smooth things out I added some finger cymbals which kind of fused the east with the middle east. The only thing missing was a deep sounding drum for the bottom end. All the drums I had to fit the bill were in the United States and I wasn't there. It was so hot in Israel, I was drinking bottles of water constantly and just polished one off. I gave it a bang and it sounded pretty good so I played a "four on the floor" pattern on the water bottle and that's what you hear on the track. It comes in toward the end and sounds like a big drum.

I had so much fun with "Adir Hu," I decided to do another take on it with a different feel. I jumped on the computer and came up with a drum loop, some synth sounds and created a nice bed for the the melody. I took out my nylon string and it sounded divine, so soothing. I spotted my balalaika, sitting in the corner so I picked it up and played a track which I also liked. I used both, the balalaika at the beginning and the nylon string afterwards. I added distortion to the balalaika and gradually brought it in, creating a morphing effect as the song progressed.

I wanted an intense, groove-oriented bass part so I called up one of my very favorite bassists, Moran Baron from a kibbutz just minutes away from me and he came over slammed a killer bass part. Moran has lots of ideas and usually lays them all down which requires editing afterwards. It's difficult to discard anything he plays because it's always so musical. In fact, I loved what he played so much that I lengthened the song by a few minutes with a long ride-out at the end to accommodate his many ideas. The long ride-out also allowed me to indulge myself at the end, playing one of my new toys, the jaw harp I got in San Francisco.

I called this track, "Adir Hu Revisited" and it's at the end of the album, just before the radio mixes. I liked the way it finished off the album, providing a long, late-night, college dorm, hang out kind of mood.

Poland December 5, 2010

I spent Shabbat in Kracow. Historic sites, cafes, etc. Went to services in a 2 different, old and now restored synagogues, one being the famous Roma synagogue and the other, the main temple next to the brand new JCC. The Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich led the services and we all celebrated the Bar Mitzvah of Mizrachi Pash, the son of Boaz Pash who is the rabbi of Kracow.

The people of Kracow are genuinely interested and respectful of the Jewish history there. It's everywhere and they are proud of it. I stayed in the Klezmer Hotel which had an old world personality to it and featured a great Klezmer band in the evening. It's also the major hang of klezmer music icon Leopold Kozlowski (The Last Klezmer), whom I met and sat with in the hotel restaurant where there are pictures of him with celebrities all over the walls. He gave me a DVD of one of his concerts and I gave him "Fringe Of Blue."

Last night I played in Warsaw at a big Chanukah event. DJs, VJs,... cool space... actually freezing space! Shared the stage with DJ Krzaku (pronounced "Kshak") from Warsaw who composed some of the most clever and innovative arrangements of music I have heard anywhere. These days, I'm finding more and more musical talent in the DJ world than in the traditional musician world. Years ago, DJs mainly spun records. Now many are like musicians and often, just as creative. DJ Krzaku from last night mixed vocal tracks, grooves, horn lines, and sound effects to create his own material and this is something DJs have been doing for a while now. I'm amazing at how good some of them are. The accessibility and manipulation of digital audio on computers has made it possible for more people to be creative in a recording environment and DJs, many of whom have a musical ear to begin, are now quite inventive, creating their own music.

Every now and then, something small, out of left field brings about a major change. Before Hendrix, electric guitar players avoided distortion from their amps. With Hendrix in the 60s, it was "damn the torpedoes, let's turn everything up and have some fun with it." It revolutionized the guitar world and with that, pop music. The evolution of the instrument at that moment took a jump.

Sometimes it takes some fresh creativity without the bias of what has come before to bring about real change. That's one of the reasons why DJs are making a such a substantial, creative contribution to music now. Their perspective is totally different and therefor can have a fresh outlook on creating music.

Lenny Solomon from Shlock Rock

This is at the Bet Shemesh Festival in Israel, September 27, 2010. Lenny Solomon from Shlock Rock has something to say.