Nine days

We’ve recently begun a period of mourning for the ancient temple in Jerusalem, commemorating the date when it was burned to the ground, 2000 years ago. Many Orthodox Jews, in an attempt to intensify their mourning, will refrain from listening to music. As a music-blog writer, I feel torn. On the one hand I want to be able to participate as much as possible in this communal mourning. On the other, I want to continue writing and posting.

So, the solution as I see it is a simple one. I’ve always thought of music as a way to express one’s feelings and emotions. We all have songs that we associate with happiness and joy, and songs that we associate with sadness as well.

For the next few days, we’re going to be posting sadder songs. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to email me, or leave them in the comments, and I’ll try to post as many of them as possible.

Olin & The Moon – Hello Goodbye

Ben Harper – Amen Omen

Miles Davis – Blue In Green

Israel Remembrance Day

Today is Israel’s Remembrance Day, a day when Israel mourns the loss of its nation’s soldiers and victims of terror. As everyone in the country has spent some time in the army, this is not like Memorial Day in America; there everyone knows someone who has died; everybody has someone to mourn for.

Since many of us are in school or at work, maybe we can take these songs as our own personal way to remember those who have fallen.

Elliott Smith – Memory Lane

Explosions In The Sky – Remember Me As A Time Of Day

Miles Davis – Israel

Wilco – I’ll Fight

Pharaoh’s Dance

Passover is almost upon us, and with it the glorious Passover foods including no bread, no cookies, no crackers, and no cakes. But hey, we have matzah (read: wheat-based cardboard), so who are we to complain?

For the uninitiated, Passover celebrates Jewish Exodus from Egypt which took place somewhere between 1600 and 1200 BCE, depending on which historian or archeologist follow. To remember we have a “seder” during which we retell the story of the enslavement via the Pharaoh and our subsequent Exodus, eat tons of matzah, and do a ton of other crazy cool customs that you’ll only really find out about if you stop on by.

So, going with Miles Davis’ assumption that at some point in time, some Pharaoh must have danced, here’s a song to get you in the Passover mood.

Miles Davis – Pharaoh’s Dance