Last night I went (as did one of my roommates) to an Erev Niggunim- an evening of singing and teaching Jewish songs (only one of which was wordless, contrary to the title of the evening- a niggun generally refers to a wordless melody). I thought it would be just singing, it turned out to be much more focused on teaching as well as sharing, but that was fine- it did give me a chance to see different people's teaching styles for this sort of thing, and some people were, of course, far more competent at that than others. It was run by the students from RRC (the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College), which ended up meaning that at first there was some talk about the liberal community, that they described as coming to Jerusalem to "get" from being here (getting inspiration seemed to be the idea) should give back- by sharing music, etc.
All this talk at the beginning made me feel rather skeptical, but then we started singing, and my experience changed significantly. Once that got started, I had a really lovely time, and started learning several tunes that I'm going to want to finish learning once I get my hands/ears on one of the recordings that was done.
When they called for spontaneous teaches/additions to the program, I even got up the nerve to offer one that I'm fond of that I rarely hear- a tune I learned from![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
calliope_epic at Lishma, and people got it and enjoyed it, and it was a really good experience. The other highlight for me in terms of pure singing, rather than learning, was that someone taught a tune (lyrics: הריני מקבל עלי את מצות הבורא ואהבת לרעך כמוך), which was basically "Rose, Rose, Rose". So I and a friend jumped into it as a round after the first time through. And then I remembered that that tune harmonizes nicely (aka is basically just two tweaks of the same round) with Ma Tovu (which is basically "Hey Ho, Nobody Home), so I segued into that. For someone who has a reasonable musical ear but lacks vocal training, this was serious excitement. It really was a thrill.
All this talk at the beginning made me feel rather skeptical, but then we started singing, and my experience changed significantly. Once that got started, I had a really lovely time, and started learning several tunes that I'm going to want to finish learning once I get my hands/ears on one of the recordings that was done.
When they called for spontaneous teaches/additions to the program, I even got up the nerve to offer one that I'm fond of that I rarely hear- a tune I learned from
calliope_epic at Lishma, and people got it and enjoyed it, and it was a really good experience. The other highlight for me in terms of pure singing, rather than learning, was that someone taught a tune (lyrics: הריני מקבל עלי את מצות הבורא ואהבת לרעך כמוך), which was basically "Rose, Rose, Rose". So I and a friend jumped into it as a round after the first time through. And then I remembered that that tune harmonizes nicely (aka is basically just two tweaks of the same round) with Ma Tovu (which is basically "Hey Ho, Nobody Home), so I segued into that. For someone who has a reasonable musical ear but lacks vocal training, this was serious excitement. It really was a thrill.