At first glance “ ’Twas the Night Before Hanukkah”
looks like a novelty album. On the cover two smiling women in 1950s garb
exchange presents by a fir tree topped with a Star of David while a demure girl
lights a menorah. It seems to promise a kitschy collection of comic tunes along
the lines of Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song.” But the people behind this double album — four Jewish record collectors who form the nonprofit Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation — say they are deadly serious about the subject. They have compiled an eclectic set of songs that not only highlight the history of Hanukkah in the United States but also explore the influence of Jewish songwriters and singers on America’s Christmas canon.
“For us it’s the one Christmas album you can listen to without having to atone at Yom Kippur for playing it,” Roger Bennett, one of the producers, said.
The set, released on Tuesday, is full of cross-cultural curiosities: the gentile folk singer Woody Guthrie singing “Hanukkah Dance” and the tenor Richard Tucker (who was also a cantor) belting out “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
It started out as a project to tell the story of Hanukkah’s rise in the United States from a minor holiday in the 1870s to a Jewish counterweight to Christmas in the postwar years, what Mr. Bennett calls “a holiday on steroids.” But as the society members dug through old recordings, they began to think the albums should also address Christmas music by Jews.
“We kept finding artists that either did Hanukkah recordings and Christmas recordings, or Jewish artists that never did Hanukkah recordings at all, but left us Christmas recordings, like Barbra Streisand,” said David Katznelson, a San Francisco record producer who is one of the society’s members. “Yentl herself, and it’s a Christmas recording!”
Continue reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment