Eli Begun isabout to release his debut album, in which he says he aims to continue the family legacy
People ask me if I was ever in Miami Boys Choir, and the answer is no. I never even considered asking my father to join, because my father liked to keep a distance between his work and his family, and he wanted us to focus on yeshivah. Still, we went to all the concerts and always went backstage to get that experience, and we each forged our own path in music. I express myself musically today, my brother Chananya has a Young Talent Initiative, bringing out Jewish kids’ talents in music, and my sister composes and produces a successful girls’ choir called Regesh.
I was a young kid then, but I remember very clearly my father’s Light Up the Nights concert in Nassau Coliseum. He was the first one to put on shows on such a grand scale, starting with Miami Experience 5, when people thought he had gone crazy. Brooklyn College, which was the standard venue for frum concerts before that, holds about 2,400 people, and Nassau has up to 16,000. When my father felt that he had something special, he made that jump, and successfully sold out the whole place. I don’t remember Miami Experience 5, but I remember Light up the Nights. There was a rotating stage, and our family sat six or seven rows back, which was our preferred spot, where we didn’t have to crane our necks. Another standout was the recent Chol Hamoed Succos concert. In addition to my son seeing his zeidy on stage, it was the first time he saw me on stage, too, so it was a really special moment.
One of my favorites, and maybe one of my father’s most original songs altogether, is “Shalom,” from the Simcha Song album. That’s “Shalom, shalom, goodbye, ki besimchah tzeisei’u….” It’s creative in the way it changes keys from the first part to the second, taking it from one “feel” to another.
There was a time when people used to actually sit and listen to albums, and I associate the albums with when we listened to them as a family. I remember Revach, for example, playing for three hours straight when we were on a road trip.
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