Music to Your Ears?

The goal of this blog is to add harmony to your Friday night dinner table. Please print and share.

One of my favorite quotes about music comes from the great Wynton Marsalis.

It is told here about the time a young person asked him, "Wynton, how do I break into the music business?"

The reply: "Break into a practice room."

Doesn't that answer really apply to a lot of things in life?

(For your table: Can you name one?)

On this theme of music, this week I have one simple question for your table, followed by an important music-related announcement, followed by my own answer to the question.

The simple question:

What's the most important secret to two or more people making great music together?

Think about it.

While you're pondering that one, here's the important music-related announcement:
We've started to add music to BestJewishKidsBooks.com.
 
For kids - try Shmuel Kunda's blend of music and storytelling.
For pre-teens, try Miami Boys Choir.
For teens - try Baruch Levine.
For adults - try Tzvi Gluckin's bluesy album. Or this one.

(Do you have some favorite Jewish or Jewish-inspired music that you think we should add to the site? Please let me know.)

Now, for the rabbi's answer to today's question:

The most important secret to making great music together....

....can be summed up in one word....

Listening.

If you are listening to each other, you can create a sublime harmony. If you're not, the music will be nothing special.

Great musicians know this secret.

Great orchestras earn their bread by this secret.

Rabbi Cardozo once compared all the complexities of Judaism to all the complexities (and rules) in music. Jewish life has the potential to be a great symphony, but it will only become a beautiful harmony to the extent that:

a. We are all playing the same song.
b. We are listening to each other.

Think about it.

On a scale of 1-10, how important is music in your life?


Shabbat Shalom


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Edison Scooped

In memory of Leiby Kletzky, the 9-year-old boy senselessly murdered in Brooklyn this week.

One of the marvels I enjoyed on my recent trip to Israel was the "Nisco Museum of Mechanical Music" at Ein Hod Artists' Village.

The proprietor, 75-year-old Nisan Cohen, had to rebuild his 45-year-old collection after last year's devastating Carmel fire.

What he has salvaged is worth a visit: with visible joy he plays for you (and will let you play) antique music boxes, hurdy gurdies, an automatic organ, a reproducing player piano, a collection of 100 year old manivelles, gramophones, hand operated automatic pianos and so on.

Imagine the delight of children (and adults) at these 100- (some 120 or more) year-old marvels.

There you can see not one but several original Edison phonographs. You may recall from pictures that Thomas Edison's phonograph did not play disk-records, but actually played cylinders.

The first disk-phonograph was built by Emile Berliner, a rabbi's son. His machine, the "gramophone", became the standard for recorded sound. (Berliner also invented the microphone among other things.) Berliner's vision didn't stop at mechanics — he conceived of an entire industry built around the production of musical phonographic disks. His company, Berliner Gramophone, is known today as RCA.

Here's a book about Berliner.

This week's question for your table is a bit philosophical: We all know what music is, right? And we all know the difference between good and bad music, right? So then: What is music? What makes music "good"?



Shabbat Shalom

PS - The bit about Berliner is excerpted from the popular iphone/ipad app, the Amazing Jewish Fact-a-Day Calendar.

PPS - Here's an ear-opening discussion of the role of music in Judaism.

(For the biggest enjoyment of this email, try printing it out and sharing at your dinner table.)