“Hava Nagila, Hava Nagila…” and Jerusalem flags pop up in the head with the image of happy dancing people at the traditional Jewish wedding sing in excitement holding the just-married on the two chairs as an old-time tradition. That’s exactly the rejoicing in its pure form as sung in the lyrics of Hava Nagila – “Let's rejoice and be happy”, in translation from Hebrew.
Jewish wedding
So well-recognized today, the song has a long and pretty obscure story behind it and not many are familiar with its roots. Would you be surprised if found out that its homeland represents a mixture of Russia and Ukraine, where this Hasidic melody first was born being called a ‘nigun’ – a single melody not accompanied with any words. After some time the nigun immigrated to Jerusalem and Avraham Idelsohn – the father of Jewish music – gave it a second birth in a form of a folklore song. There is was, a business card of the Jew with a mix of German, Russian, Yemenite communities’ features in it. The song with lyrics taken from the Psalms was included into the Hebrew folklore songbook and was selected as a celebration song to mark the defeat of Turks by the British during the World War I. The tune caught up immediately and soon the whole Jerusalem was performing it.
Rabbi
So many times was the song re-made, re-sung, re-arranged that counting them would be barely possible. At a certain point it even became the object of various parodies and humor sketches by both Jewish and non-Jewish artists. But let’s stick closer to the beautiful original-like versions. And here’s a lovely one – arrangement of Hava Nagila by Tal Zilber. And the author himself performing his work on piano:
He died long ago – in 1883 – but is still deeply respected and remembered by his people. Manuel Gregorio Tavarez up to date presents an endless inspiration source for new music generations of Puerto Rico. Though not completely a Puerto Rican (his father was French and his mother from Puerto Rico), Tavarez grew up a very talented and patriotic boy who became a zealous pianist at an early age. The French roots helped a lot too as after studies in San Juan he was granted a scholarship for courses at the Music Conservatory of Paris. Despite the health problems Manuel returned to his homeland and sat down to work on his masterpieces.
Manuel Gregorio Tavarez is mostly renowned for splendor in the so-called genre of “danzas” - short piano pieces that were flourishing during his lifetime. Tavarez even received the title of “Father of the Puerto Rican Danzas” and critics say that his music style can easily be compared with that of the famous Polish colleague’s – Frederick Chopin. Among the greatest works are such danzas as Rendencion, La Sensitiva, Un Recuerdo. But his biggest pieces in many sense is of course the passionate Margarita. If composers were to give out business cards – Margarita would surely be the one for Tavarez. Here’s a transcription for advanced intermediate piano for those who like some challenge in a piece of classics.
An epic drama with deep sense, exceptional director’s work and, of course, stunning music scoring – that all gives a faint image of one of my favorite movies ever - Schindler's List, directed by Steven Spielberg. And for those who still haven’t watched this piece of art I strongly recommend doing it at the first opportunity available.
It’s never been easy to reflect properly the events that took place back in the history. And if those events bear a very negative emotionally character the task gets even harder. One has to be somehow spiritually connected with the subject to make people re-live the history watching the movie. Steven Spielberg used to hear a lot of stories about Holocaust from his granny and his Jewish roots made the needed connection work for him. He did want to create a film about those shocking events but didn’t feel mature enough to take up that ‘unmanageable’ work. But time came and he gathered the team and pulled himself together. Not hoping for big success and rather expecting the movie to flop, Spielberg set a small budget and shot a black-and-white documentary in Krakow within 72 days. He didn’t even use expensive cameras opting for handheld cams for a more realistic effect. According to witnesses, most shooting days were full of tears, for the director himself experienced hard times going through all the horrible scenes.
The choice of music was an especially responsible and challenging task for that would make half the impression. That’s when Spielberg turned for help to John Williams asking to compose the score to the whole movie. William, too, felt immature, despite the fact that he had an impressive music experience in his baggage. The composer was stunned by the film itself and got to work with great effort. Once the piano score to Schindler's List was ready, Williams also hired Itzhak Perlman to perform the main theme on violin too. The result was rewarding. The score was awarded “Best Original Score” at the 66th Academy Awards Ceremony along with the other 6 awards.
Unexpectedly for Spielberg, his B&W film was a box office success being rumored as one of the greatest movies made ever.
