“With Benny, it’s never just a day at the office — he sings it like he means it”

Just Out

New Releases, Fresh Takes

MAY YOU BE BLESSED

Six years is an eternity in current events nowadays, and also in Jewish music. But while the Jewish world has heard plenty from BENNY FRIEDMAN during the past few years, including several popular singles and hit oldies albums, he has not released a full-length album of new songs since, as the promo of his newest release, BE GEBENTCHED, puts it, before people ever heard of coronavirus, AI was a nickname for a basketball player, and England was still part of the EU.

Benny and his producer, Doni Gross, started working on an album of original songs over four years ago, but Doni explains that “When you’re making an original album, the material is everything, so finding the greatest songs is eighty percent of the work, and it can’t be rushed.” Also, Benny says, they kept getting distracted by other projects, including his It Sounds like Chanukah and It Sounds Like Purim playlist albums.

Some of the concepts and ideas came straight from Benny’s heart, and he and Doni spent hours upon hours working on music together, which they both say were fun times. “With Benny, it’s never just a day at the office — he sings it like he means it,” says Doni.

Although Doni is known to have completed some projects in record time under tight deadlines, he says that this time, it was a leisurely creative process with plenty of opportunities to take the music in different directions, chop and change the arrangements, and incorporate different styles and genres.

There’s a lot of funk, which Benny’s fans expect, but there’s also a song called “Talui Becha,” with its exquisite vocals and inspiring message, complete with an oompah beat that was popular decades ago. Another blast from the past is “Ir Hakodesh,” a Yerushalayim song composed and arranged by Moshe Laufer with something of the 1990s-style end-of-second-dance sound of his still-popular “Chazak” and “Shehecheyanu.”

The title track, “Be Gebentched,” is a concept that Benny, who is a Kohein, has been considering for a while, and he looked to several composers in his quest for a great way to make it singable. Yitzy Waldner wrote one tune, but although Doni and Benny liked the high part, they were unsure about the low part. Hershy Weinberger wrote another tune, and the final track merges the two, with the traditional melody of Bircas Kohanim wending through the arrangement in background vocals.

Another long-standing dream was a song for the Rambam’s famous principle that not only members of Shevet Levi, but any Yid who is so inspired, can choose to stand before Hashem and be involved exclusively in avodas hakodesh. When Benny and Doni originally sat with Hershy Weinberger to find a niggun for these words, they didn’t think they had come out with anything special. But a year later, Doni was looking for something else when he found some music that he liked from that session. He pasted together the parts he’d found and did a music demo with Benny’s vocals, sending it to the composer. Hershy’s reply was, “Very nice song, whose song is this?” He was totally surprised that it was actually his creation. Doni decided to bring the song to Suki Berry, he says, “not just because he’s a musical genius, but because he actually spends his life in this way.” The final result was the powerful “Kadosh Kodoshim.”

To add to the mix, the duo experimented with a new style. “Mashiach is so near. Maybe we have to shake ourselves up and get over the last hump by getting a bit meshugeh, crazy in a good way,” says Benny, and he expresses this upbeat concept in a novel (to Jewish music) genre in the song “Boogie Woogie Go Meshuggi.”

One morning last summer, Benny was on his way to the studio when the news of Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh’s elimination was publicized. “I was humming the pasuk ‘Ba’avod reshaim rinah’ and then I went and looked it up. I think that people are sometimes confused about how to react to the killing of a terrorist, but the pasuk makes it clear that their elimination is a big simchah. The world just became a little bit holier.” That day, he worked with Doni on producing a song they called “Oy Vay,” a play on the pasuk from Tehillim 18, “Erdof oyvai va’asigeim.”

“We kept saying that we got to get that song out,” says Benny, “and then just as we did release it, the Houthi leaders were killed.”

Story Behind the Song

Say Hello to Mashiach

The last song on the recent Yingerlach IV album, “Shulem Aleichem Moshiach,” can’t claim originality in its theme, but it does offer a fresh angle and feeling.

“There are lots of powerful songs out there about Mashiach from MBD, Avraham Fried, and others,” composer YONA LIPSHITZ agrees, “but I wanted to include a song specifically about children welcoming Mashiach on his imminent arrival. I had the melody, but I struggled with writing the lyrics until I went to Yiddish badchan and songwriter Motty Ilowitz. I told him my feelings and he executed it perfectly, depicting the children saying shalom aleichem to Mashiach, and Mashiach's  warm response to them, “Aleichem hashalom Yiddelach, ets hots mir gebrengt [You brought me here].” Nothing like the youthful, innocent voices of children to instill joy and hope in what we all pray will happen very soon.

Mic Drop

You Never Know

How do you know if a song will succeed? According to RABBI BARUCH CHAIT, the answer is that you can’t know. “In 1975,” Rabbi Chait relates, “I collaborated with Shlomo Carlebach and Abie Rotenberg to produce an album we called Shlomo Carlebach and the Children of Jewish Song Sing Ani Maamin, or which was just known as Ani Maamin. I remember sitting with Shlomo, looking through his library of unrecorded songs, and there was one called “Mimkomcha Malkeinu.” Shlomo felt it would not catch on at all, but I thought it was worth a chance. That became one of Shlomo’s most widely known and beloved pieces, a proof that even the composer himself can’t judge or evaluate the impact a song will have, until it’s gone out there.”

My Eul Soundtrack

“Be’ein Meilitz Yosher,” and oldie from the London School of Jewish Song. It’s a timeless melody that we all grew up on. The nusach that’s usually used for these words in davening is a very sad, pensive one, almost like a crying sound. But in this melody, there is a lot of warmth and an expression of prayer, of begging Hashem for rachamim at a time of judgment.

–Levy Falkowitz

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1077)