About last Sunday

Performing Yiddish music is not for the faint at heart. And I am not talking about searching for a sheet music of that one particular song that was a huge hit in its heydays and now is almost forgotten except it's catchy refrain which, when you finally find that sheet music (and the whole process can take years and sometimes has nothing to envie to some Hollywood blockbuster with its action and suspense), is not even the song's best part. I am not talking about blundering amongst the twenty six dialects of Yiddish, every now and then stumbling upon Daytshmerish (flowery germanized Yiddish that was used in theater for the fancy sake), falling into your grandmother's Ukrainian dialect, your grandfather's Polish, your other grandfather's Lithuanian and trying to stay on a right path of a theatrical prononciation.

I am not even talking about performing surrounded by a protective circle of police or quite agressive antisémitic propaganda, suit yourself.

No, I'm talking about real stuff here. The big guns. The serious business.

I am talking about our audience. About each and one spectator that comes to sing with us, breathe with us, keep Yiddish music alive with us.

Each Jewish showgoer is like Beethoven himself: he will forgive you a false note, he will not forgive an indifferent one. Those songs that for him transcend keys, notes and lyrics, those songs for him are his mother, his childhood, his family. His youth. All those incredibly precious and fragile things that we get when when we're are not ready to appreciate them, only to carry them with us, in us as our most precious possessions for the rest of our lives, now and then trying to find their reflection in people, smells and tastes that cross our path, in songs that fall on our ears.

Not a darn chance you can perform for this audience without giving it everything you've got and then some. Because it gives you everything as well.

Last Sunday "Khaïes" performed at Café des Psaumes. Café des Psaumes is a very special place. There is no stage per se and, quite frankly speaking, forget the stage, there is no space, the chairs are often put so tightly one next to another, that you find yourself doing an impossible stunt: singing a Yiddish song without using your hands.

There is no acoustics, as the ceiling is so low, our altiste Sasha has to watch his head, forget getting up to his full height. Some keys on piano are falling in, others are out of tune, but who cares? The audience, oh the audience at the Café des Psaumes ! They are right there, in your face, theirs faces, their eyes, their memories, their émotions are so close, you can touch them. They sing with you, those refrains they now and those parts that you spent years researching/rearranging/banging your head against the wall. If they can't sing, they nod. They sit there with their eyes full of tears. They sit there talking loudly to each other about how they don't understand the word you're singing or how the singer they saw the other time at the other place was better. They clap when they want to, doesn't matter the rhythm, doesn't matter if your actually singing or playing or actually talking at this moment, who cares, they came to enjoy the show and they enjoy it, the show doesn't matter.

They are there for you one thousand percent and this is more than you can say about a lot of people.

I think being a Jewish concert goer requires certain qualities: an exorbitant zest for life, heart wrenching sincerity, great sense of humor, a treasure trove of memories, each one a precious emerald, the most fragile of gems, and that mysterious thing we call "chutzpa".

I have reread the last paragraph and I said to myself: I have just described someone's perfect friend. Or Bashert.

You wanna be among those people, come to our concerts.