Meeting Up with Myself

Meeting up with Myself

Unless you spent Purim under a rock, chances are you’re already singing SHMUELI UNGAR’s newest songs from his just-released SHULEM ALEICHEM album. There’s the catchy “Eish Tomid” (“Eish tomid tukad al hamizbeiach lo sichbeh… A fier brent in hartz fin a Yid”), which has been blaring from speakers on every corner, the timely, “A Zechiah” (“Shrei os bekol rom, bochar banu mikol am, a zechiah tzu zayn a Yid”), and the intriguingly different, “Shokadti Ve’ehyeh Ketzippor.”

After a run of five albums with Naftali Schnitzler, Shmueli and Naftali agreed that he should try to bring to life his own taste, acting as his own producer, and admits that “I learned a lot of things along the way.”

“When you have a producer,” Shmueli says, “it’s true that you relinquish control, but you have the assurance that he is overseeing everything and making the tough decisions — which arrangers to use, what key to sing in, how to order the songs…. Doing it myself was hard work, but also satisfying.”

After sending out a call for new songs, Shmueli listened to hundreds of demos in his quest for the 12 perfect tracks. “Two of the tracks, ‘Habitah’ and ‘A Zechiah’ came from unknown composers via that call — Chaim Altman and Mendy Mandel — but the truth is that people send me new songs regularly. I can’t listen to all of them, but when I have a few minutes I try to sift through them. If something sounds appealing, I play it until the end. ‘Habitah’ moved me the first time I heard it, and ‘A Zechiah’ struck me as uplifting and fun. Although the demo I received was a little ‘bochurish,’ I could feel it was high energy — and the feedback from yeshivah bochurim has been great.”