#miqedem

יום הולדת שמח, Yaron Cherniak, frontman for Miqedem!

Adoni Ro'i (Psalm 23) // MIQEDEM

There is another holiday happening in parallel to Easter. Or to be precise, some of us celebrate Easter, because this older holiday exists in the first place: The Passover / Pesach. So I went hunting for some music in hebrew or yiddish. I found fine yiddish swing, Passover songs to sing with children, some lively klezmer and a lot of musical kitch. And then I stumbled upon MIQEDEM.

MIQEDEM, an Israeli band from Tel Aviv, have been blending the old and the new to bring a pretty tight mix of Middle Eastern Israeli flavor with a modern edge. They took the original 2500 - 3000 years old text of the Psalms directly from the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible - consisting mostly of the same books as the Canon of the Old Testament) and paired the hebrew lyrics with indie / folk rock and Middle Eastern sounds for 21st century. Some of the melodies are original harmonies passed down through the centuries, some are reconstructed from snippets that survied, some are new. The result is a symbiosis of traditional and modern and well crafted instrumantations.

“You will experience chord progressions, instrumentation, and Middle-East/Western mashups that will take you into territory into which you may never have gone before, but Miqedem will gently lead you by the hand every step of the way and assure you that it’s gonna be alright.” (1)

Interesting side note: MIQEDEM have a back ground in Messianic Judaism, which is a fairly controversial new movement within the Jewish community. They truly stand with one foot in both of these religions.

So, here’s what I picked...

The Betzet Yisrael (Psalm 114, also known as “When Israel went out of Egypt”) is one of 6 so-called Egyptian Hallel prayers among the Psalms. It is recited on the first and/or eighth days of Passover. Part of the psalm is also quoted at the beginning of Dante Allighieri’s Purgatorio.

The Psalm 16 (Ahavti) is a thanksgiving psalm, often used as a public (christian) prayer. The City of Belfast has a quote from this psalm in its coat of arms (Pro Tanto Quid Retribuamus - Psalm 116:12).

Psalm 117 (Shabechuhu), also known as “O praise the Lord, all ye nations”, is one of the so-called Egyptian Hallel prayers. It is the shortest of all psalms.

Psalm 13 (Ad Ana) known in English by its first verse "How long, O Lord" is a lament. It is used regularily in Jewish, Catholic, Anglican as well as Protestant liturgies. It is one of the psalms which is often used as a libretto for various works of music, from Michel-Richard de Lalande who turned it into his great Latin motet for the offices to the Royal Chapel of Versailles in 1692, to Johannes Brahms who set it to music for women's choir in three voices, "Herr, wie lange willst du", or Franz Liszt.

And the last one I picked is the Psalm 23 (Adonai Ro’i)  commonly known as the “The Lord is my Shepherd” prayer, possibly the most famous of all psalms.

 Happy Sabbath, relax and enjoy.

Highlights: - Track 2: בצאת ישראל - Betzet Yisrael (Psalm 114) - “When Israel went out of Egypt” - Track 5: אהבתי - Ahavti (Psalm 116:1-2, 116:19) - Track 6: שבחוהו - Shabechuhu (Psalm 117) “O praise the Lord, all ye nations” -Track 8: עד אנה - Ad Ana (Psalm 13) - “How long, O Lord” - Track 12: ה׳ רועי  - Adonai Ro’i (Psalm 23) - “The Lord is my Shepherd”

Playlist: - https://spoti.fi/3bB5lH7 - Lyrics with English translation (click on resp. song) @BandCamp