"Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the talent it takes to write lyrics and combine them with a tune that really brings out the meaning of the song"
Eleven years ago, Jewish music aficionado YITZCHOK LEVINE was looking for music radio options to listen to that suited his “traditional ben Torah taste,” so he used his background in IT and web development to create his own music streaming website. He’s still the joint CEO of the popular Jewish Music Stream, which he says, after all these years, “is still about classic kosher music.”
Hard to pinpoint just one album, but all the Dveykus albums and their overtures — especially Dveykus 4, and the somewhat lesser-known Dveykus 5 (which made me go back and listen to the first three Dveykus albums, released before I was born) — always bring me back to my appreciation of the older style of simpler, but in my humble opinion, more powerful, hartzig, authentic Jewish music.
Yaakov Shwekey’s earlier albums (Shomati, Shwekey 2, Yedid) are still favorites, and I would pick Baruch Levine’s debut Vezakeini as one of the best albums out there, with his subsequent albums (especially Chosson HaTorah) not far behind.
The classic “Al Hanisim” (from the 1977 Amudai Shaish 2, actually composed by Dov Frimer and initially recorded two years earlier on the Shivat Tzion album) is generally first, and then comes the vintage “Yevanim” that Rav Shmuel Brazil composed around 50 years ago (first recorded on an old pre-Regesh album called Shmelkie’s Niggunim).
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