[Dixielandjazz] Two horn ensemble

[Ministry of Jazz]

Shalom Larry,

We sing almost everything in English. Most Israelis speak or understand at
least some English, and they are used to hearing American music on the radio
and TV. We do a few Israeli songs that were written in Hebrew that fit our
style. When I first got here 10 years ago and I was learning to speak
Hebrew, as an exercise I translated Cabaret into Hebrew, and it came out
quite nice. For some reason I didn't use it for a long time in performing,
and only recently refreshed my memory of the words so I could start singing
it in Hebrew. My Israeli band members tell me the flavor of the words is
good.

I know other English speaking musicians around here who have translated
American folk, jazz or pop songs into Hebrew successfully, including a
barbershop quartet who does My Wild Irish Rose in Hebrew.

One thing I have done for Hebrew speaking audiences is to translate the song
titles into Hebrew and give a brief explanation of the song for them in
Hebrew. Since I favor a lot of humor, I often tend to translate the song
titles into  long and delightfully clumsy Hebrew versions just for fun. For
instance, "When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam'" comes out, "When
the Train that Goes to Alabama Leaves the Station in the Middle of the
Night." But actually most songs probably could be transported to Hebrew with
a little effort. Since editing Bible translations is one of the things I do
for a living, I am intimately familiar with cross-cultural translation
issues. The only problem is, I doubt if there is any money in creating a
songbook of American jazz tunes in Hebrew. Not that there is much money in
playing them in English either...

Elazar
Dr. Jazz Dixieland Band
Tekiya Trumpet Ensemble
Jerusalem, Israel
www.israel.net/ministry-of-jazz
+972-2-679-2537


-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis
[mailto:larrys.bands at charter.net]
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 6:31 PM
To: jazzmin at actcom.net.il; Ken Gates; Dixieland Jazz
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Two horn ensemble


Elazar:
Do you sing the tunes in English?  If not how do they translate and how well
do the audiences understand the overall flavor of a tune? ...