The English Chapter
Jewish Songs. For All
This page answers the two open questions. It is the working room of the project, under The Song is Back.
The story so far
Jewish songs are dying. That is what people believe, because Jewish songs mean Yiddish songs, and Yiddish is fading. Jews still write new songs, yes, but mostly in Hebrew, close to prayer. The few in English tend to be religious, hymn-like. A real stream of new, secular Jewish songs in English barely exists. What there is amounts to a trickle, not a river.
Walter J. Kin is changing that. Here is what he has done, and continues to do.
In 2017 he began asking the poet Olga Anikina to write old Yiddish and Hebrew songs again, not translate them, in Russian, keeping their grief and their joy intact. She has done it more than thirty five times since. The songs reached millions of listeners, most of them not Jewish, and many wrote that they took them by the throat.
Take Hanukkah oh Hanukkah. Almost nobody really sings the old melody anymore. Walter asked Olga for a Russian version. She wrote it. People loved it. Then he wrote the English version himself, and rewrote the music until the original tune was barely recognizable underneath.
Listen, and ask yourself one question: do you want your kids to sing this on Hanukkah? I do.
Now Walter is doing the same across the catalog in English, the one language that could carry these songs to the whole world. He writes most of the English versions himself for now, but he says so plainly: he is looking for someone better, a lyricist he would rather pay than credit himself. And he is looking for the other missing piece, an artist or a voice who can carry a rewritten Jewish song out of a small audience and into the mainstream.
Do you know someone who can write such songs, or better? Or perform them? We have a great offer for them, and for you.
Tell usWhat we are doing
Choosing the songs that still have something to say. Writing them again in English, the way they were written again in Russian: new words, the same spirit, and one line any listener can stand inside. Recording them well enough to be judged.
Who we are looking for
A lyricist in English who can do what Olga Anikina did in Russian. If that is you, the work is paid. And voices. Nobody is singing these songs yet. We need singers who can take one of them into the open and make a room go quiet. If you sing, and one of these songs will not let you go, write to us.
What we do not promise
A hit cannot be promised by anyone. What can be done is to make a song ready for one: the right song, the right words, a recording that holds up. The rest belongs to listeners.