Warming Up the Crowd

“One niggun that gets requested night after night and never gets boring is the ‘Berdichever Niggun,’ made famous by Shlomo Carlebach”

“When you’re leading a kumzitz you have to have good instincts for the crowd. Sometimes they’ll want to sing the same songs over and over, sometimes it’s time for faster songs because they want to get up and dance. One niggun that gets requested night after night and never gets boring is the “Berdichever Niggun,” made famous by Shlomo Carlebach. Sometimes we sing it for ten or even twenty minutes. New songs come and go, but one that has been really popular recently, even among crowds who don’t speak a word of Yiddish, is Chesky Weiss’s “Far Dir, Far Dir (Kah Ribbon).”

-Singer and “kumzitzer” DOVY MEISELS

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 833)