A new Yoni Rechter songbook

About ten days ago, there was an interview on TV with Yoni Rechter in which he discussed a new songbook ("Twenty songs from five decades"), his fourth. A few days later, I was in the local mall (after having my chest x-ray) and went into the book shop, asking about this book. I didn't know its name and I didn't know whether the book had been published yet (the interview said that it would be published in a few weeks, but now it occurs to me that the interview could have been recorded a week or more before it was broadcast). A salesperson looked it up on the computer, found the name of the book, found that they had it in stock and eventually found the physical book on the shelves. It makes a welcome change to buy something as it is published and not a year later (more on this later).

As per its title, there are (only) twenty songs in the book and these come from all across his career. There are a few from his first solo album (1980/1), some from his last 'official' album (2017) and a few from his most recent album (again, more on this later). I haven't really had the strength or ability to concentrate on reading the sheet music, but as his songs have been accompanying me on my walks for the past few days, this was an ideal opportunity to look at the notes for the title song of the last album "Svivenu" ("around us"). 

Funnily enough, I was thinking - prior to hearing this song - that there are very few Rechter songs in 6/8 or 12/8; of course, "Svivenu" is in 12/8. The song is presented in the key of A minor (although there is a modulation to Eb in the middle), but a note in the introduction to the book says that the recording is in a different key. The first chord in the verse is naturally Am; the second chord in the first verse is Bm7 (b5), which is the diatonic chord formed on the second note of the minor scale (B D F A). A few bars later, a different chord is used: B7b5; in other words, the diatonic D has been sharpened to D#, leading more naturally (pun not intended) to the E7 chord that follows. Further on (after returning from the modulation), that second chord is now B7 - not only has the D been sharpened, but also the flat fifth (F) has been 'unflattened' - it's now F#. My point is that the same sequence near enough occurs three times, but each time that second chord is changed slightly. That's variation - or sophistication. There's plenty to learn from these examples. If I get really bored, I might try entering all the notes into the MIDI sequencer.

Now resolving the 'forward' references: a few weeks ago, I idly accessed Yoni's web page (or rather, Facebook page) and discovered that he had a 'new' album of children's songs released; this came out in January 2020, before Covid-19, but presumably the pandemic prevented any PR effort on behalf of this album. Again, in one of my visits to the local mall, primarily for medical reasons (if I remember correctly, this was when I went to get the salt pills), I went into the book shop, but this time found the disc immediately.

The first few listenings to the disc were somewhat confusing, but shortly everything sorted itself out, and I very much like this collection. The writing is cinematic: voices and instruments come and go. I wonder how children would find these songs because they are not straight-forward. An animated clip of one of the songs ("Pnina") can be found here; this song is like a mini-opera and again I wonder how children would find this. This song is one of those included in the new book, so I can give a short analysis. After two bars of musical introduction in 4/4, the first bar of singing is in 5/4 followed by one in 4/4, then one in 2/4, three bars in 4/4, one in 5/4 followed by several in 3/4 before the song returns to 4/4. In other words, metrically strange. But it may be easier for an untrained mind to learn this song simply by listening than for a trained musician to follow the notes. All of the songs on the album can be heard on YouTube, starting from here. 

The title of the album, "Yoni Giraffe", is a joke: on Rechter's previous album for children, "The sixteenth lamb", there was a track called "The giraffe has a long neck" (he can see things coming a week before we can) which is introduced by Yonatan Geffen commanding "Yoni, Giraffe", i.e. Yoni, play the Giraffe tune. Needless to say, Yoni Rechter is ... tall.

There are a few 'songs' that are spoken with a musical background; my favourite is one called 'Zebra' which is a Hebrew translation of a song by Shel Silverstein. I was going to translate the words back into English, but I found the original (the Hebrew differs here and there):

“I asked the Zebra,
are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on and on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.”