Behind the song
The song’s story
A new song with a traveling word
Meshuga means crazy. It comes into Jewish English through Yiddish, with Hebrew roots, and now circulates well beyond Jewish communities. In this song, the word becomes the sound of a crush too overwhelming to keep quiet.
Two phone calls, one problem
He calls his mama; she calls hers. Both are full of opinions and short of the courage to speak to each other. Walter J. Kin wrote this comic duet from scratch. It is a new contribution to the repertoire, not a translation of an old mother-song.
The instruments join the gossip
Clarinet, accordion and trumpet answer the voices, while the chorus takes the mamas' side. Beneath the exaggerated panic is a tender admission: the singer misses the person who is driving them crazy. Jewish language and musical colors frame an everyday human story.
About this recording
He calls his mama. She calls her mama. Both have the same emergency: a crush they cannot bring themselves to confess to each other. The jokes finally give way to an admission of missing someone.
This is a new song by Walter J. Kin, not an adaptation of an inherited lyric. Clarinet, accordion, trumpet and an answering choir turn the romantic panic into a klezmer celebration.