Somewhere in between celestial choirs of angels and the corner barbershop quartet is an increasingly popular phenomenon: the chassidic men’s choir. It’s not Pirchei, and it’s not about celebrity vocalists. Today’s music users are becoming infatuated with the blended sounds and mature harmonic backgrounds only a bunch of leibedig, music-loving guys can produce together.
It’s one thing to sit around the Shabbos table at home or yeshivah singing your heart out but could you imagine yourself doing it in front of a crowd? Fourteen years agoChiluPosen couldn’t imagine it either. Could a love of singing really segue into a career?
“A friend of mine from yeshivah told me ‘I know you love to sing. Why don’t you come sing at my son’s bar mitzvah?’ I got together a few guys and it was such a big success it convinced me I could really do it for a living.”
Posen didn’t immediately resign his day job working in a Judaica warehouse. But as the reputation of his choir Mezamrim began to grow he got so busy he had to quit in order to devote himself to it full time.
He explains that while Pirchei boys choirs have been performing and recording popular Jewish music since the 1970s this is an entirely new genre; in the past decade there’s been a growing demand for this new entertainment medium — the adult chassidic choir. It has become de rigueur at weddings Shabbos affairs when instruments are prohibited sheva brachos and fundraising and testimonial dinners — and not just in the chassidic world.
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