Soundtrack of our Lives with Yossi Green | Mishpacha

[Music] [Music] oh [Music] me [Music] one tells a story quite like mishpacha magazine but sometimes you're telling a story and you realize that the reader is going to be reading it and they're going to be humming along in their minds and in their hearts and you want to give them that three-dimensional experience so join us at the piano at the legendary piano of aggressive green little zanka zone to welcomed us to his home and to his life to a little bit understand the evolution and the process of creating the songs that have become the soundtrack to our lives over the last year and how close to half a century thank you for having us thank you for coming thank you for the opportunity to tell that story we talked via civil sectaria we talked about the [Music] your music as the eventual planted machiavellian just like he planted rabbits rosh hashibas and zaddikim and good bolobotany planted composers at different times in clay assault history and so so much of their contributions have lived on as a window into specific periods and eras in our history and that's true for you as well you you were a child as we discussed very much a child of holocaust survivors whatever that experience means with the emotion with the difficulties with the challenges and the opportunities what you were exposed to and and that was reflected in your music and and almost the coming of age of the american torah community is reflecting your music as well so you started out let's say with with compositions that maybe reflected the pain that you were exposed to tell me a little bit of what you saw in the basement every day and and about a song that sort of expressed that i grew up in a sophomore home my parents were much older than me between me and my next sibling is 18 years my father lost his obviously his parents and the only reason why my parents were nitzl was because they they were in tameshwar which is further south [Music] i grew up in satmar so in saturn there was a lot of eden who were you can tell on them they were older eden that they had gone through the holocaust but they had this incredible sadiq we who was sitting in the front and he was keeping it together numbers were a standard thing as a matter of fact when we met an old person we would right away want to see if he has numbers it was like we didn't know what it meant and i remember asking my father once what the numbers were and he says of this guy significant fray go ask ask him i guess he didn't want to deal with it or and i walked over to an older eid and i asked him definitely what are those numbers these nods and he says you know when i was a young boy we got the telephone for the first time and for the life of me i could never remember my phone number and my mother went ahead and she wrote me the number on my hand so that i should remember the phone oh i was a little kid i walked away and my father says to me i told my father the story and my father gave this credits i'll never forget so as we got older we people weren't even yet ready to talk about what happened people process it it was just numb num and it was all about mashiach all about the google all about i'll never forget one of the most personal stories that i remember that i that i experienced with satmarabha my father for some interesting reason i don't know why i had a seat on the bhima so even i was a little boy we were able to see and and sakura used to go up before call nidre and there was a little table with with his white yarmulke and the white and the kittle and he faced the islam and he started like this i'll never forget because it blew me as a little boy he says last year i want to say in english is last year we stood over here and we were 100 percent that this year mashika is gonna come and he was silent and he starts screaming for a second shane what happened what happened you know and and the entire show began to cry and i remember there was no doubt in everybody's mind that this machine was supposed to be supposed to have come this year what happened what did we do wrong what happened you know so this was the typical the right train of your life the frame of my life was that exactly and as i suppose we said many times like if we've made if we made plans on chanukah what are we going to be putting uh i'll dress up like a lion if mushail doesn't come and then if we make plans for camp um well i'd like to we we had our friends together we'd make plans we'll go to this camp with machiko doesn't come and i remember as children we were guilty hoping that maybe mashiach would be understanding and if he would come and come after him hold off the left hold off the laptop your early music reflects a lot of that [Music] is [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] [Applause] are you [Music] i wasn't planning to cry and here you are introducing little american kendall in the land of safety and security to the world of how you van i should go to topics that maybe they weren't ready for but you gave them away yeah well the song reach people it hit people it's not fast it's not fun it's not kashmak but it sure you know i was getting here summer 2021 you go to the camps they're singing this through the nine days right that's true yeah so i'll tell you also we were also in those in those years when you went to schulte and the the yi that was saying master shabbos he was sitting on the floor this older eid and he was saying they couldn't put four words together we had to wait they'd said and then he would be quiet and then he would come up come with the next word it was like like you know straight through like today it was like we had to wait a long time because the guy was saying it he he had experienced this whole thing you took apostate and you gave over that experience absolutely that was the that was the experience of of of of hearing and you were pretty good you weren't how did you have the courage to do that why couldn't you just look at everybody else and think easy what what gave you because in those years all of us i wasn't the only we were all busy with that i mean all the plays that we did in camp it was all there was always they were positive but but they reflected back to what eden had gone through 10 15 20 years before i mean i was born 10 years less than 10 years after the holocaust [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] me [Music] me [Music] [Applause] me [Music] who would sing a song like that today today nobody would sing you write a song like that today no oh no not not reflecting back to what was you know today when the song is written today it's it's i mean when when something happens in claudia's role which so it's it's it's it's it's updated these are not the the tsar that we felt as young children from the from our parents who had experienced a world is caring at the acceptance of the fifties and the sixth right and then something shifted a little bit american tour world got a little more confident maybe i i when i think back this was not something i was thinking of at the time is that i was very lucky that i came along at a time when claudia's still began to sing again after the holocaust we can imagine that those first 10 years you know claudio wasn't singing the first big high record came out and then with the aussie son oblique the second big high record came out and then herb schlemmer and people cloud israel began to sing again every single today until today like you said crabsie avenue is the the exit and you want to be any aspiring singer who wants to be anything comes here well the among the first one one of the i'm one of the stops for this one what are the first steps okay any aspiring thing it started probably with our family i would think coming in here and i rambled showed up with chiamandowitz for the first time shayman lewis is a story with arsenal mentos is one of our my alumni in new york school of jewish song conducted by igal salek right at the time in order to save the money not to have to bring in the kids from london so they so they bought only igal and they found yeah why not eagle could do it anywhere you did you know and shia madlowitz was one of the was one of the kids anyway fast forward because i hadn't seen him he was 12. five six years later suddenly she met louis is 17-18 now he brought this very young young buccaneer avraham friedman who knew that you know that he would change the world and he changed the world there's no question about it ximena was sitting next to me over here and he was in in back of me i remember because i remember i had turned turned around i remember sitting turning to the side this piano this video this is very beautiful it was all done on this view i don't see the scratches and the bruises and the uh sure the gouges and the sure this is the piano she said look i'd like to make an album with this young guy and and um we'd like to get some songs from you and at that time i had no idea what songs because he obviously i wasn't going to write pierce songs for him and i turned around to him and i said him could you give me an idea tell me what what are you what are you about and it's funny because it's the first time that i did it and since then i never stopped i mean i always am looking for a direction an entrance into the piano through the some clue that i get from the singer and he turns around and he said and and he says to me very very open very straight very not trying to be uh cute not trying he says and by us we believe that no jew gets left behind no you get left behind i turned around to the piano of barbashov and i had this um literally literally this is on these words that's all we had was left behind no tear will be left [Music] will send us back again [Music] that was the beginning of my relationship with abraham and on the spot he looks like he says you got it yeah well he there's something in that song which a reflects your evolution yes uh confidence and and something very libar which about it something about the triumph right also he's young he's younger and he did not see this williamsburg the southward this uh more of a sadder reflective he was part of a hasidis that was bubbling that was going to change the world and change america and bring you were trained to suffer already much earlier in the century yeah they were communist russia so they developed those muscles before the hungarians oh yes you know they were ready to fight and you see that stamina that they have and you made a low part on the spot as well yeah this was the yeah [Music] seem can empty them all with mitzvos knowing that each deed is all we need to bring the loneliness of gullis ah [Music] together as we try look to the sky and you will see a vase how big it does [Music] no tears will be left [Music] again [Music] [Applause] [Music] and standing proud as we pray yeah [Music] left behind so those days we use lyricists so once we had the idea we would work at that time we worked with the girl pedina claver what's her name splendid what you could write there are none too lost or lowly and you could write that today and it will resonate with people you are onto something big yep sure you know you have to see we talk so much about the message in your music so people look to be you to be almost a musical ambassador to create songs that would resonate not just across the hamish world but really to send a political message too no i can't really say that my message has anything to do with political messages but there was one interesting uh thing that does relate to us it relates to cloud israel anatoly schwaronski i think this was in the in the early 80s that he was in prison over there in russia for before being a yid his wife came to visit morocco david in seagate and she asked him if if we could work on a song about her husband and that she would somehow manage to get it into the former soviet union and that it would make a big deal it would make a big difference to people and i remember my mother called me up and he was just as surprised as i was in the beginning that how could that be that something that we do here should make a difference and um and we got together at the time matka wrote the lyrics called hold on just a little bit longer and i wrote the melody and what we heard afterwards was that they brought a copy of this of his album which was called hold on just a little bit longer and um that was duplicated tens of thousands of times and people got tremendous physic from it later on after hibernate came out we heard from him from his wife that the song had made such a huge difference i've got some good news to tell you moshiach's on his way though he won't wait any longer is coming any day so hold on just a little bit longer cause every word he promised will be just hold on and you'll see i have some good news to tell you she has on his way though he won't wait any longer he's coming any day just hold us a little bit longer cause every [Music] there must have been a at some point the obvious question which you're really asking yourself you saw these eden coming out and they didn't get it done the sophomore of obama they're not here so us you know little people worried about our carly's yeah we're going to get it done that must have been something that that kept you up at night and needed to be addressed yeah it was it was that was the um the challenge of amuno was that because as as these eden began to to pass away you were wondering if they would somehow with all their thrillers they weren't zorka to be shaykh how is it going to be us this is part of the uh where'd you find an answer for that well well they're they're first of all last week because of tishman there is it's loaded with answers that all these forums talk about the the the final nashomas and so on but in those days avramel had this beautiful beautiful idea this was his idea called the giant shoulders he was actually troubled you have to understand something about available which is very interesting as a young person he was troubled with this as well we had these conversations when these songs were written and when these are out these these albums were recorded we had no idea that it would have an impact we were doing it because i mean there was somebody i guess shia was involved in the in the financial end of it i was not involved in the financial i had to did something else for a living i remember was just beginning at the time we didn't really know it was it the purest of motives it was we had an idea we sat together we spent many hours together and we talked about these ideas and he was very i remember him being much younger than me and having tears in his eyes and then stopping off to think about it and which inspired me further to express myself and he would call me up uh yes guess what i just just i just thought about something you know and he would so he told me this thing with on giant shoulders he says that um this giant who had a little boy and he wanted to show this little boy the his son he wanted to show him the palace the great palace and then they set off on their way to go see the palace and uh what happened was when the um the giant got to the to the wall he saw that the wall to be able to look into the palace was much taller than it was him that he was there and he was very very sad because here he had the little boy and then he says look i thought we'd be able to see the palace of the king together but i guess we can't do it together so what i'll do is i'll pick you up and i'll put you on my shoulders and you'll be able just to see because all you need is a little more and you can see and i heard i i heard it i heard it right away i heard right away where he was coming from you know and we will do with brothers after us there'll be no others you and i will do what giants want to do so stand and take the credit we will be the ones to end it though we're slow we're standing tall like soldiers [Music] almost like a question in that song and this is the answer again with triumph and confidence and poise and self-assurance we're gonna get it done [Music] it's clear to anybody who sees this farm shelf in this house that you're you're not just finding cute lyrics on google and knocking out songs that you're living when these ideas and these concepts are the walls of this home testify to a lot of time spent on on these topics on these circus [Music] even more recently you came up uh you introduced clients out to mattress they probably never heard and a term of how mushyk is going to address us in a way which and and back with madra again i'd like you to sing it somebody lives down the block a couple of houses down i don't get to see him very often but when i see him i can i know you know he's got such such kind charisma so so gifted and um we learned so much torah together through the years and so on so when i make it city i live on the tea he lives right at the t junction so if he's there when i when i make i'll pull over and i'll i'll come out and we'll talk and so on so one one night i pull over and he says to me you know to write a song i said sure with you always why not show any dream it takes me down to his uh to his basement and we start he has as a studio and we start you know finagling around with the piano and you know and and um and i'm telling mata what are we writing about what uh well i mean she says i don't know here there's a matter here take take care [Music] uh there is there's there's a lot of madrashim in those and i saw for this i saw the first time i saw the madrid which was like here the matter she's talking about a time when when it's a possibility even i couldn't contemplate such a possibility because we have not um all our understanding of mashiach was machines in the common all the the people are going to go crazy and and here there's a there's a kind of a different view that is standing on a third-base amigdas standing on the roof can't even imagine where what the vision is where which part of it and he's talking to claudius when he's saying i love him it's here already and he's convinced how do you understand the usage of another so i understand well i know him was humbled once humbled once so there is there are humble humble humbled people that have been humbled through history and that was the reason the reason why he was he was being menacing i had all kinds of discussions about vimena what does that mean you know and um we decided then there we means if if said so many years so many so much that we went through it it's kind of it's it's like that he'll be here and he'll have to say claudius foreign [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] so there you're you're generally telling the story through the song and that november is like almost an entreaty were you surprised by the reaction to that song that it was you mean over the years but you know that it took 15 years until it didn't come out right away right 15 years why it just you know it was um mata said an incredible thing when i did the eighth note the we couldn't get it done so the two of us liked it so um either he he got it arranged and he asked me what do you think and i said tommy zeinsberg is i don't think we got you know we got that he says what do you have in mind and i have this in mind and he says well i don't really hear it the way you hear it so it took a while until we finally but it was really about shared to be on the eighth note which is what triggered the eighth on because until then until i had the i had enough of him i didn't that was i kind of built my first project my first my own album on that song and when that happened mata says to me you see honestly every song has an address and this song was in your address not in my address it's beautiful which was uh yeah perhaps the most glorious the the the prophecy that rings loudest from all your mashiach it's not even hard to imagine coming and that will be a lot of your songs might be on the playlist then we'll see people talk you know you sit in the nine days there's a lot of human a lot of us you are marcus and people they're the last gemara and marcus and and they hear the words of the pastor and they right away get a lift because of what you did today they can see it everything is seated but some some shattered smiles are open like you know i had a uh what's your name you know why why i opened up why i was on the piano why we opened up to zacharia that day you know standing right next to me over here and he had required a song i don't know if you know the background there was an army base in ghoul at the time and they obviously they didn't need the army base in gula right anymore and they changed it over to an old age home it was a big dinner a fundraiser naturally mata was hired to do it and came over to me at the time and he says look i need ups a song reflects and why how do you how are we going to find a song that reflects i mean whoever has any question that this is about shared one thousand percent and i remember opening up the okay let's segue right here and we opened up and there there were the were the words you wrote the intro you wrote this intro as well no this intro was written by so lamb i mean he started he he arranged called rama a quick uh chorus i thought to him santa claude i was very excited and i wanted to to write more songs and i remember i would find lyric and i got into my thing and i wrote and i wrote it and i went to lamb and i said so what do you think he says the second part doesn't go anywhere you need to develop you know you you got to develop it the way you developed colebrook you know to the next part he would say you can do better go and you can do better better go home you can do better i believe it wasn't it wasn't like the mantra of williansburg it was something new exactly it was something new for me he was the first professional musician that we had a person that really got dimensions yeah brought that mention exactly the concept of arranging the introduction here is so so fitting [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a lot of your your latest songs especially are so rousing and so with so much confidence in the people we talk about your evolution uh there was this video going around not long ago of people coming to berkshire animated kaiser holland and the old city had speakers set up kaiser the plaza with your playing [Music] it must have been in a way a different challenge to go to such words that people say three times a day that don't have the instant glory of words that were either english or an original madras or ghazal just to go back to those words that's it's a great point by the way because um it's so interesting guy there's a famous vert i'm not sure who that when i was young i thought i would be messaging the world sounds obvious and then when i got older i told my city and then as i got older my neighborhood and i got older my family and then when i got older i'll be able to be massaging myself and i i realized it's interesting that when we when we start writing we're always going out to look to to see what's out there all these strange words and so on but as we get older we begin to realize that the words that we've been saying all along you know you know are so meaningful they would say hashem has everything you need yeah so i'm coming back to myself you know and would say i know i i would say i was zoid to to experience this by the by the coastal one one friday night i went actually michael bruce was mama that that night mana rosenblum and i asked him would he come back with me when he walked with me to the crystal and he says sure let's go we went there guys i was expecting they said the case was never empty and couldn't find anybody over there and i remember that cleared away all the chairs and i remember taking two chairs put it down smack in the middle of the of the square and uh we had a gemara with me and we learned whatever we learned our shirt for the day at the time and then i saw all of a sudden had that feeling it was like two at one thirty two o'clock at night and i was uh thinking that um we're about six seven hours away from from new york new york is now going to be in kabul shabbos and all the villas of all of the the world the east coast they're all coming here now and it says that they the trailers come first to the car you still from here they go straight up i said and i said to him and i said and here sitting here is the two of us you know you get you get the chills from that so he says on this maybe maybe you could write something on this i remember we walked over to the island and that's when the songwriters say it was written so say was the beginning of of of uh schweinstein that began a from that point on it was a journey [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is the part you were talking about [Music] me is [Music] oh [Music] foreign music has carried us through some challenging difficult years it's not hard to imagine that when the happy times start and mashiach comes it'll be to your music as well obviously sometimes when somebody's very good at something and they find that slack or they're scared to change the change scared to rewrite the rules don't don't mess with success the saying goes but somehow you were able to not let that happen not to get locked into any one genre and you know people throw around game changer a lot but you've written a lot of game-changing songs for singers for the genre for the firm world probably the most the one that comes to mind first would be tanya which totally threw out the rule book blew it up and started from scratch what led you into that place what made you think it was possible what gave you the courage to do that so tanya well first of all we found it i found it in the community and i remember finding it and not believing it's possible that sacha kumar was there because as we discussed many times who didn't learn broken stuff zion and everybody learned that before they gave up and they said you know what i'll start from shabbos you know but people definitely learned broker's design and somehow um the message over there was that that that urban slum is asking vishmul goodall who's a coin and has the power of blessing that he should bench him kabyocho was mind-boggling it's it's funny all through the years um people say to me what was it that you saw so i said i said you know why didn't you answer that question what did you say what do you feel you're obviously asking about the song so you felt something everybody feels the same thing they just verbalized differently is that they saw first of all the the question is is incredible that the request the the the kosher caviar for a broker and the response that it's it's obviously the bundesliga was eliciting a specif specific response it wasn't you know he he wanted it should be sadly guys or college broker mccain the biggest sadik at the time obviously the coin goodell was smoking alicia and he's telling this come on give me what what is it that you would want that you would you would bench for me and he says so it was it was uh first of all it was it was the clear though the person what what a in humanity yeah but he's saudi geysers and the bunch was showing in the showing this concept of that there is you you can get a broker from a sadiq and the topic will be geyser and i have to do it sadik said what should i do so that was that was the answer and and the question the the but there's also something in the tune that calls to mind the classic-based madrid schnegen yes so the class of tom yeah that's a respect for for the fact that it's a gemara right the people [Music] okay okay i heard the song already you know come on let's move on some people got stuck by the song and kept singing you know it was smash anyway but [Music] happened [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] oh boy foreign [Music] [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] some people ask why didn't you stop there because i didn't want to end with the word again [Music] but then you you went out of the gemara even and out of khazal into the world what it did was and i think i heard this from you once that it took the there was a concept that was possible yeah the world of uh don't worry about it be happy about elevated this is ours it's our teaching it's our source we want to see what what are we going to do and here it is so diagonally nine and we had all these vertaga and somebody said to me that you know dagger the le the word is put together from olive based gimmel dollar hey without the base so it says i started getting from all kinds of people all kinds of uh the feedback is always wonderful because you have people who are learning it and they're darshaning it becoming the songs speak to people yeah sure if it doesn't talk to them they're not sending you feedback [Music] ah [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you're very nice that you give credit to the sinkers and not to the comfort these are your songs but he was standing right here next to me so as soon as i heard him go [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] me [Music] my [Music] [Applause] [Music] when i got married there was only one her there was only one song and again you we were the rules all the other horrors were either the shamans or shabbat or cemeteries if you were like really creative and you went somewhere totally different and you took words that people weren't familiar with and and that you put them to horrors very interesting what tell me about that and what a song it became well how did uh what made you use the commander maybe i'm not even sure what it was well the dobby what what made it so what made you do that okay [Music] [Music] so i just felt when i heard it there was this was not just a gemara this is a saying there's like a uh a pete like a poem that they had that they were talking about because it had it was like a mantra to the people right so you try to express that exactly [Music] oh [Music] so what i got from this it's so great the doughbay has become out for you 26. okay so that'll be cool you have that so there's also somebody sent me right afterwards do you realize that the dobby is becoming yeah sure it's funny because you think that this song is just a fun song without the stickle tiger but even here there's always obviously so much innovation has come forth from your piano but perhaps the biggest game changer of all might be the words of the rebel melech that speak to every single jew every single morning to me it was unknown certainly before this song and now it's printed in every in every sitter because people it was you know it was pretty you know we had those small siddharma we went with the plastic cupboard but the full sidorum so that's where i saw it that's where you started but it was a short dome i don't think when we were kids that had the two of them no art scrolling [Music] and you're not going to go to legislation any time of the year and not see people singing that over there and and really everywhere it's yeah i i have to share something with you i did an article in the magazine last year last successfully i think it's very kind of you and and we just had this informal thing asking people what do they think of rumble's best song which is always fun we ask people in the industry people who know another album was that the overwhelming his legacy song is out there it's so interesting because when after tanya you know at the time i remember the challenge was it was awesome what are you going to do after is there anything i have to do right a song that has one word an interesting word and um it just brings to mind a song which has its own world and then uh i remember other hour chamber came along which was uh we're we are one had it i i remember the time that was you know you know you know when you get a little older you you you sometimes sometimes there are there's macholicus you know and you you as and you wonder about it and you it's hard to understand that you know that when adults you know we're kids we understand we don't you know we have to work things out so but i was i was i remember i was very moved and i saw that that the father of all the hasidis pretty much besides khabad was and he wrote either i would tame bilibano collected the smallest i mean take us there and of course years later i this i found out years later that there ever that riven cerebral used to live in seagate we have these beautiful tinuas you know these old karpati you know and this is history [Music] so this kind of came into that even though this little piece is my shallower [Music] foreign [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] oh [Music] hey [Music] as many times as you hear it right me too for everyone [Music] [Music] are we [Applause] [Music] [Applause] for we are forever [Music]

Channel: Mishpacha

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Keywords: Mishpacha, israel, jews, jewish, jerusalem, torah, what is judaism religion, what is judaism religion all about, what is judaism, judaism, jewish religion, jewish educational media, jewish 101, the bible explained, the bible explained for beginners, Aliyah, Jewish Community, Jewish Education, Partnership Israel, JTV, jewish TV, jewish Media, jewish news, jewish music, yossi green, MBD, Zemiros Choir, Avraham Fried, Tanya, Aderaba

Id: W7LQ0EJsRzw

Length: 59min 40sec (3580 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021