It’s a collection of songs that, over the years, have found their way into the chassidish singer’s very bones
ISAAC HONIG’s newly released KOL BAYAAR album is an inspiring collection for any lover of authentic, old-time music. Against a background score arranged by Yehuda Galili, its scope encompasses emotion-laden classics from a wide range of musical galaxies: Modzhitz, Karlin, Skulen, Chabad, Vizhnitz, Satmar, Novardok, and the chazzanus of Yossele Rosenblatt and Leibele Waldman. Some of these selections are almost-forgotten melodies while others are still in circulation, but all of them are full of vintage chein and come to life anew on this album, accompanied by the power and rich emotion of Isaac Honig’s vocal delivery.
Songs from the past have a certain emotional pull, a quality always difficult to define. They are full of depth and yearning, stretching back to transport the listener to a time and place where spirituality and dveykus seemed more within reach.
“I believe that, because many of the niggunim that were passed down were composed by tzaddikim, they carry over the gaaguim — the tzaddik’s deepest yearnings. That’s why they penetrate deep inside the heart,” Isaac Honig says. “Think of ‘Meloich’ by the Kedushas Tzion of Bobov, or ‘Kol Bayaar’ which is attributed to the Shpoler Zeide, who was a talmid of the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch. Even the compositions of ‘regular’ Yidden were of a different quality in those days, because people were different, more meditative, less distracted.”
It’s a collection of songs that, over the years, have found their way into the chassidish singer’s very bones. “I still remember the first time I heard the Skulener Rebbe’s niggun ‘Venafshi.’ I must have been five or six, but the song enraptured me. I also heard ‘Husheiv,’ recorded by Dovid Werdyger, when I was a child, and the more well-known ‘Kol Bayaar’ was on an early Sdei Chemed album. As for the niggun we used for ‘Ani Maamin,’ I first heard it on Purim, at a play in the Bobov court. The play was about Chananya, Mishael, and Azaryah, and the actors sang this niggun when they were about to be thrown into the fire. Forty years later, I still remember the poignant lyrics they sang to this tune. I’d previously heard that it was a Modzhitz song, so a few years back I went with my son to ask Reb Benzion Shenker a”h about it. He sang it to us and explained it was the composition of a Modzhitzer chassid named Reb Koifman Yidel Eidelson.”
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