[Hashoshanim now has a facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/Has.... Please stop by if you have a chance.]

Here's an initial sampling from demos I'm making of my current project for the purposes of recruiting collaborators and perhaps a producer this fall in Israel. If you want to hear the tune without explanation, click the link or go to GreTscH Pages Radio, but don't be shocked that it's not in English. Translation is at the end of this post:

http://gretschpages.com/med...

Project description: This is from an inclusive setting of the biblical Song of Songs (Shir Hashirim) in the original biblical Hebrew. The lyrics are approximately 2500 years old. Traditionally attributed to King Solomon, who lived a few centuries earlier than that, the book's superscription can be translated either as attribution or dedication. Accordingly, it has also been called the Song of Solomon. The Latin version is known as Canticum Canticorum, which also serves as the title of Giovanni Palestrina's amazing setting of selections of the Latin lyrics. For over two millennia, these lyrics have informed both Jewish and Christian liturgy and theology, though there is no explicit theological content. Indeed, it is largely a collection of erotic lyrics loosely united by theme and imagery. Some Jewish communities chant it on the eve of the Sabbath and it is widely chanted ritually in synagogues on the intermediate Sabbath of Passover. Rabbinic interpretations have employed its verses to express ideas about the erotic relationship between God and Israel and to illustrate points about the Exodus from Egypt, the Revelation at Sinai, the dedication of the Tabernacle, the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem, and Israel's exilic situation in the diaspora. Rabbi Aqiva declares in Mishna Yadayim: All of the writings are holy, the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies. Christian exegetes and theologians have drawn upon these lyrics to express the relationship between Christ and the Church, Christ and the individual soul, and marian theology as well.

By rendering the book inclusively, without editorial rearrangement or comment, without excerpting or omitting anything, my song cycle leaves all of these interpretive opportunities open. It can simply be apprehended as some of the oldest recorded erotic poetry, or as part of this or that theological or historiographic tradition. Oddly, my research has not turned up another version that does this in any language (though one may yet appear out of some as yet untroubled archive) outside of traditional cantillation. I omit nothing, though words and phrases are repeated to fill out metrical lines and to serve as choruses for the 18 songs into which I have re-divided the 8 traditional chapter divisions. On a very few occasions, a lyric may be introduced just slightly out of order when interweaving lines in counterpoint. The lyrics are assigned to a male soloist, female soloist, and male and female choruses according to grammatical and narrative cues in the text.

The instrumentation will eventually include a mix of western and middle eastern instruments, especially an oud, traditional percussion, drum kit, possibly some electronic beats, reed, violin and perhaps accordion/harmonium. I've composed the entire thing from guitar riffs, but some of that may need to be trimmed or subordinated as other instruments are incorporated into the arrangements. The current demos are sketches to be filled out. This song, 'Ana Dodi (My Beloved Answered), was recorded at a local studio with my T-Rose (before its conversion from HS Filters to T-Armonds), percussion loops, and the help of a female vocalist. The male vocals are mine, but ultimately I am looking for a better vocalist who looks more the part of a hot shepherd.

The lyrics for this tune are taken from Chapter II. You may consult your own favorite Bible translations, the following is my own rendering:

Female Chorus: My beloved answered and said to me: Rise up my companion, my beauty, and go forth. For now the winter is over, the rain has passed and gone away.

Male verse: The buds have appeared upon the land, the time of singing is come. And the voice of the dove is heard in our land.

Female chorus: My beloved...

Male verse: My dove in the crannies of the rock, in the shade of the cliff. Show me your appearance and let me hear your voice. For your voice is sweet and your appearance comely.

Female chorus: My beloved...

Male and Female verse: Take us foxes, the little foxes who destroy the vineyards, for our vineyard is in blossom.

Female: My beloved is mine and I am his, the shepherd among the lilies (x2).

Female bridge: [Wait] until the [heat of] the day has blown away, and the shadows have fled, [then] turn and make like a deer, or like a buck of the gazelles upon the mountains of separation.

wow! gonna share this.

This is really cool.. thank you for posting.

Thanks guys. I'll post a few more. But I also forgot to write the rig up.

2008 T-Rose with HS Filters

de Lisle 15P (Thanks Mugsy!!!)

Dyno Brain (I think we all know that Tavo makes us sound better)

DM-3 delay

BOSS TR-2 trem

Percussion loops poached free in bits from the web and from the studio (Big Sky Recording in Ann Arbor) library

Pretty simple. Great engineer. If anyone in SE Michigan is looking for a recommendation, PM me. Chris is a joy to work with.

nice to see you sharing this with everyone!!! (I've been privy to some sneak previews)...

great stuff, astounding project, and the offer to contribute parts in any way still stands!

Hey Mustafa,

I'm going in next week again and I'll ask Chris how I can get some tracks to you and how you might suggest some oud lines. It needs oud. Desperately!

Really great, Strummerson!!

Hey Mustafa,

I'm going in next week again and I'll ask Chris how I can get some tracks to you and how you might suggest some oud lines. It needs oud. Desperately!

dropbox or YouSendIt me the rough mix, i synch and record here, send it back

Here's another. Came out a hair or two too slow. And a better lead vocalist will certainly help. But it's another sketch.

http://gretschpages.com/med...

This one is called "Libavtini (You Capture My Heart)." Lyrics from Chapter IV.

Verse 1: With me, from Lebanon, my bride. With me, from Lebanon. Come and look out from the peak of Amana, from the peak of Senir and Hermon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of leopards.

Chorus: You capture my heart, my companion, my bride. You capture my heart with [a look of just] one of your eyes. You capture my heart, my companion, my bride. You capture my heart with a single link in your necklace.

Verse 2: How beautiful are your caresses, my companion, my bride; how much better your caresses than wine. How beautiful are your caresses, my companion, my bride, and the aroma of your oils [better than] all perfumes.

Chorus

Bridge: Nectar drips from your lips, my bride. Honey and milk are under your tongue. Nectar drips from your lips, my bride. And the aroma of your garments is like the aroma of Lebanon.

Chorus

At this point I must say that this place is nothing less than astounding.

Beautiful poetry.

Well, wow. Super concept, and even in demo form, the execution is pretty fabulous.

Your voice seems to work quite well with this material and mood. I say look no further for a singer.

Carry on, Strums!

Paul/FF909

Oooh! Cool tuneage Strummerson! Thanks for sharing! . I need to get my Audacity issues worked out, get off my lazy butt, and do like you (and others have done), contribute some music to the forum.

Thank you, Strummer. I've always liked Song of Songs. Rock on, brother.

Thanks for listening all.

Cool!

Bump for http://www.facebook.com/Has... announcement.

"Oddly, my research has not turned up another version that does this in any language."

The lyrical content (of what I have read ) is very evocative IMO of the mystical poetry of St. Kabir, or that of Rumi..

There are parallels/echoes of Akkadian love poetry and Osirian litanies as well, and thus with Theocritus. The idea that the text borrows from fertility cult hieros gamos traditions has fallen out of favor with scholars, but I still think there's something to it, given the overlap in vocabulary and imagery. So monotheistic exegetes aren't interpreting away sexuality, they are assimilating sacred sexuality into their own mythographic frameworks. The fact is that the division of sacred and secular is a modern paradigm. For the ancients, the division between biology and theology didn't exist.

Sorry, I am of the opinion that hieros gamos is at it's root, symbolic. It conveys upon the object of devotion an image of female form 'as lover' , only because that Divine Love is mirrored in male-female relationships in the world, and is a convenient and relatable-to symbol.. ...

But essentially, it is the Absolute only, which is the focus, and not 'that which is bound by decay'. Kabir's and Rumi's work talk of very very similar mystical attributes as does 'The Song'..and they also clothe them in female form, but they never confuse the two.

For me, in mystical poetry the division between theology (ligo=to bind) as in 'one's heart bound to the Absolute' or 'Yog'.. (the Hindi or Sanskrit root of Yoga, again meaning 'to tie or bind with the Absolute').. and the biological, there is always a markedly profound difference, and a marked division. This is again for me, echoed in the Torah and in many other Scriptures.

The lack of division only appears to exist, because the listener visualises the Absolute in female form as a tangible and experiential vehicle for 'that which is unborn, un-become, unmade, uncompounded', as the Sutras say, and in order to 'clothe the Unknowable and to try to make that vision concrete, the reader or listener confuses the two.

In actuality the Absolute never becomes incarnate (ie. made of meat :-) and the female form as Goddess is only a symbolic vehicle for the expression of that devotion and longing between the Poet and the Ultimate.

Kabir's and Rumi's work talk of very very similar mystical attributes as does 'The Song'..and they also clothe them in female form, but they never confuse the two.

Except both of these poets are late compared to The Song. For instance, The Song does not discuss any "mystical attributes". These are assigned later by Jewish and Christian exegetes. It is fundamentally a collection of lyrics about desire within fairly lush natural settings but also in fraught socio-political circumstances. My point is that in the ancient near east, predating Rumi and The Song by centuries, even millennia, the dualism that we take for granted was quite foreign. This is why in Genesis and Exodus the text is completely untroubled by the anthropomorphic deity. And this is what spurs the exegetical and interpretive creativity of later theologians that are committed to the duality of spirit and flesh and need to find ways to read that transform all the physicality of the deity into metaphor and pedagogical allegory. This is essentially what the first part of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed wrestles with. And does so brilliantly. But he lived in the 12th century. We are talking about poetry that is two to three millennia older. There's no problem with incorporating older texts and reading them through the lens of later ideas. But I do think it's important to be historically conscious that doing so is creative more than analytic.

And to your original point, I think you misunderstood me. I have not found any other comprehensive musical setting of this text in Hebrew or any translation, as much as it has been excerpted and paraphrased.

Thanks for posting this Strum! I don't do fb, but I'll await for more of your GPRadio uploads!