A musical day

A starting point for today's story could equally be yesterday evening, a week ago, two years ago or even 42 years ago... I think I'll start from there. In the 1970s and 80s, kibbutzim used to have a weekly evening of Israeli folk dancing. When I emigrated in September 1978, there weren't enough people on my kibbutz who were interested in folk dancing so we used to combine with a neighbouring kibbutz and a neighbouring moshav. There was a new dance (to me) which I learnt fairly quickly: it had lots of bouncing around and was very fast, and dancing it produced a great deal of endorphins. I never managed to catch the name of the song, but it was a girl and boy singing alternate verses.

Over the years, I've enjoyed dancing this dance but still have never managed to learn the name of the tune. The recording to which we used to dance probably wasn't too clear and anywhere I was too busy bouncing around and trying not to collide with any one to catch the name of the song.  It was played the other week at the harvest festival (itself a strange event because of Covid-19), although I wasn't fast enough to record it on my mobile phone.

Yesterday evening I decided to make a brief recording of me playing the tune on the piano; I thought that I would send it to someone more versed than I in Israeli music during the period 1948-78, while it still had a charm of its own and was less western European in its attitude. This morning I sent my recording to a colleague and she replied within ten minutes. Here is the song which I know, and here is someone teaching the dance to a different version of the song, which is called 'The flower seller'.

Once I was finished with this song, I watched part of a documentary about the Tamla Motown label ('Hitsville') which was very interesting. Tamla was part of my childhood but it was not something which I ever grew close to, instead admiring it from afar.

Part of this inspired me to write some lyrics. At the beginning I worked out the music to a new song, whose arrangement I've been working on ever since. Unfortunately I've never been able to write any words for it, apart from an incomplete verse which I wrote at the beginning. Today I went back to the song, and within about ten minutes (literally - the writing went incredibly quickly) I wrote another two verses and a middle section, including rhymes and proper scansion. It makes me wonder how I can be barren for so long and suddenly the whole thing pops out.

After a rest, I thought I'd try my hand (or my voice) at recording the vocal. Instead of getting out the mike stand and microphone, I thought that I'd try the headset which I use for Team/Zoom meetings. This worked out very well - at least, after I turned off the air conditioner which was affecting the microphone badly. One take and I was done. Listening to the playback, I realised that the tune for the middle section was almost exactly the same as another of my songs, so I had to sing this part again with a different tune. This went quickly and I was also able to slot the new verse into the time line without ruining anything else.