CD review - Shma Koli by Meir Banai

Meir Banai's latest album is a collection of classic songs done in an acoustic guitar singer/songwriter format. Religious standards like Lecha Dodi are almost unrecognizable with Banai's newly composed smooth groovy melodies. Sephardic and Yemenite classics like Ayelet Chen are given guitar-based, love-ballad like treatment. Banai is a veteran Israeli singer from a family of famous musicians. This is a video with him and Israeli saxophonist Daniel Zamir.

Musicians of Ben Yehuda Street, Jerusalem

I was in the car with Ari & Jeremy coming home from Arutz Sheva and I asked them to dropped me off by Ben Yehuda Street. I thought that would be convenient for me, but it turned out I had to walk further then usual. But I had my camera with me so I took the opportunity to get video of some of the many street musicians. Here it is:

Yesterday I wrote an article about the Professional Women's Theater, who are having their gala end-of-the-year performance this Thursday featuring Shuly Natan. You can read it here: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126509

You can read an old interview I did with Shuly Natan here: http://israelbeat.blogspot.com/2006/05/shuly-nathan-interview.html

In my last blog entry, some guy commented that he prefers classical and light jazz. So I thought I would make a list of some Jewish classical and light jazz for him. Any suggestions?

 

I love the Arutz Sheva jukebox!

I love the Arutz Sheva jukebox. When I am working and want some background music, I just click on one of the hour long streams and just let it play. My favorite used to be Ehud Banai mix. But now I am into New Mellow Selection 284 because it has Kobi Aflalo. You can check it out at: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/Jukebox.aspx

The first time I heard of Kobi Aflalo, I was in the Central Bus Station with my friend David and he asked me if I every played Kobi Aflalo on my show. I told him I never heard of him before. So we went right into Tower Records on the second floor and asked if they had him. He had just released his debut album and they had it as number 1 on the rack. I like the first track a lot, Shir Gaguim. The rest is a littler too mellow for me. I found a cool video of him singing Yosef Karduner’s Shir Lemaalot on the internet.

But back to the Arutz Sheva Jukebox... This is the next best thing to a Jewish Pandora. If I want an hour of Lag BaOmer music, it's there. All accapella music mix? It’s there. David likes the songs by Ariel Zilber because they’re political. I like the new Hassidic selection because they added a lot of “original” music, meaning Moshav Band, Yosef Karduner and other Carlebach influenced stuff. The Hebrew Jukebox, or Tevat Neginah looks the same but has some different selections. Check it out at: http://www.inn.co.il/Radio/Jukebox.aspx

The French Arutz Sheva site has a jukebox too, but instead of lists, they have a separate page and a short biography of each musician. I spent an hour or so listening to Haim Moshe. Check it out at: http://www.a7fr.com/articles/musique.htm

And yes, David, they have Ariel Zilber in there too. David speaks a little French, but If you don’t speak French, you can always use Google Translate at http://translate.google.com