ARC Music 1840

Credit this England-based vocal and instrumental quartet with actually coming up with an original arrangement for "Hava Nagila" which is somewhat true to its origins as a Hasidic melody. Otherwise, the 16 songs included here--about half of them drawing from the cosmopolitan Jewish liturgy--reflect a certain Israeli folk aesthetic partial to clarinet and violin and heavy on acoustic guitars.
There is a penchant for finding the sinuous grooves and winding melodic lines in European songs that predate modern Israel as well as in contemporary Israeli folk songs. The group's versions of traditional material like "Kol Dodi" and "Dror Yikra" are workmanlike but not without feeling, whereas the four selections by contemporary songwriter Naomi Shemer are lighthearted.
Well-worn chestnuts like "Erev Shel Shoshanim" have a faint whiff of "A Mighty Wind" about them, but with a few Shlomo Carlebach numbers and contemporary folk classics like "HaFinjan" and "Bashana Haba'a," this makes a pleasant sampler of or introduction to 20th Century Hebrew folk music for the uninitiated.--SR

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