‘yo menamori d’un aire’ a tune for missing friends. (trad sephardic)

http://www.zelwel.com/May_13/may19_installation.mp3

‘installation’ a min 47 of noise.

http://www.zelwel.com/May_13/may19_riversofbabylon.mp3

‘rivers of babylon’ keyboard improv based on jewish trad ‘al naharot bavel’.

http://www.zelwel.com/May_13/may19_itwasadream.mp3

‘it was a dream’. yes it was. exspearimento.

a strange thing to be an introvert and then suddenly baring your soul to the universe.

i pour my soul out through my music. no clue how to market as sometimes my guess is it’s not really marketable. but i do it (the music) anyways.

there was a spike in this site’s stats after yom tov- maybe there are more ‘frum hippies’ out there than i thought.

the business itself is a killing field. people do all sorts of nasty things to try and gain some edge. but my mentor told me DO THE WORK… and that (being a competitive jerk) is not part of it. so i distance myself from such individuals (and communities dominated by such individuals) and seek instead to build mySELF.

so slow. but it’s working!

we know you love us. we love you too. yes we do.

anyways we have 3 pieces of advice-
1) don’t hate anybody
2) love everybody*
3) get over yourself.
* which does not mean let them walk all over you or your beliefs

we think it works. anyways we’re trying it and so far, so good. (said the moody one……)….

and now… some pretty flowers.

first the folk-
http://www.zelwel.com/May_13/may13_mizmorldavid.mp3
mizmor l’david- psalm 23- a traditional tune

then the experimental
http://www.zelwel.com/May_13/may13_scarymusic1.mp3
scary music 1
http://www.zelwel.com/May_13/may13_scarymusic2.mp3
scary music 2

anywho to book me solo or with a band (or for any other reason) write me an(/ a nice) e-mail at zelwel at hotmail dot com & thanks again for listening.

www.zelwel.com/May_13/may12_barleycorn2.mp3
john barleycorn must die #2- traffic cover.

www.zelwel.com/May_13/may12_therobots.mp3
the robots- kraftwerk cover

www.zelwel.com/May_13/may12_gottado.mp3
+ something else somewhat more experimental- a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do or as one of the more inspirational characters of my life used to say- yashar yashar (untranslatable but it more or less means keep moving forward).

here’s the traditional sephardic tune ‘morena’ again after some practice.

i’m sorry if this site has been sad for a while. it’s how i’m feeling. see… if i was an entertainer i would put on my happy face and try to sell it. but i’m not- presenter, yes, entertainer…. ????

i’m an artist and this is me and though it may not pay the mortgage (YET…. sue would say…..)… being like this, that is, it is what it is. i’m never going to be the guy that says I AM THE GREAT AND WONDERFUL BLA BLA BLA I DID THIS I DID THAT (because i feel what i do speaks for itself).

unfotunately that is what gets hired in the music biz … unless you’re just fabulous and everybody knows you (some of my friends are and that is encouraging….).

lately i’ve gotten into the habit of pairing melodic pieces with more experimental ‘noise’ pieces. so to go with ‘morena’ here is a noise piece. it’s called ‘narcissist vs empath’. (rough definition as used here- narcissism is about having it YOUR way. empathy is about bringing beauty to the world as you feel (for) others and have a sense of this. these two world views are diametrically opposed. they are repeating patterns and i see them in ‘art land’ all the time. in our sad fictional scenario here where each takes one side of the stereo loop the narcissist wins because he can yell the loudest. as a matter of fact he yells so loud that by the end the empath cannot be heard at all. since this is a work of fiction this all happens in less than 3 minutes.)
http://www.zelwel.com/May_13/may7_narcissistvsempath.mp3

in honor of cinco de mayo- ‘the wooly bully variations’. (‘wooly bully’ by sam the sham and the pharoahs, of course. and yes the sinfonia antarctica references are intentional.)

also i posted these to soundcloud last week-

‘unititled’. this is perc, e-perc, etc. sue calls some of this ‘pretty’.

‘hafinjan’ trad jewish-armenian folk tune. see http://www.hebrewsongs.com/?song=hafinjan for something about the song.

piece-o-day ‘in the machine’ a cri de couer in drone.

(the other nite i was at a show where most everything was like this. ’tain’t anything like mi yodea or gHOST project.)

mi yodea in rehearsal

eliezer kaplan, sue kaplan, ann gross rec apr 21 and apr 24, 2013 on a handheld zoom recorder

1) waterslide  (‘slide’ by kaplan, ‘mayim’ by amiran) 2) firn di machatonim aheim (brandwein) 3) im ninalu (trad) 4) cockeyed jenny/ zemer atik (barton bros/ kashtan & neeman) 5) heyser bulgar (brandwein) 6) los bilbilicos/ vayiven uziahu (trad/ zarai) 7) yedid nefesh (zweig & zweig) 8) mashiach hazaken (zarai/ ofek) 9) mayim (amiran)

this is stuff we’ve been messing with in rehearsals lately. i don’t think the recorded sound here really does this justice- not much i can do about that at this time. generally these podcasts will be built out of home or field recordings mostly done with a handheld zoom. so please don’t get hung up on the recordings and view the performances as the thing…

about this. this was recorded over two rehearsals and gives some insight into what we’ve been into lately. it’s interesting to me that there is only one original here- my ‘failed’ experiment with slide and mayim which became ‘waterslide’. the rest of this is covers. we come back to ‘mayim’ at the end but now as an independent tune which will probably show up in future shows. in fact when i started mi yodea one of my primary interests was to play the israeli dance music that my mother used to dance to and that i grew up with. there’s quite a bit of that here. in researching some of this i was surprised to find that ‘mashiach hazaken’ and ‘vayiven uziahu’ were written by the same composer- yochanan zarai.

we’re working as a trio now- keyboard and two percussionists. this (minimalism) presents a musical challenge which is not insurmountable (consider beat happening) but it is a challenge. mi yo would love to add a few more people who are willing to put in time and effort in the further development of this (and other) material.

mi yodea wuz here

here’s mi yodea (sue, ann, me) playing naftule brandwein’s ‘heyser bulgar’. sue and ann arranged the percussion based on an analysis we did of the original recording (on ‘king of klezmer clarinet’). fun stuff!

this is from ‘the compleat klezmer’. i might uh changed a few chords… but if you want to learn this music buy this book.

piece-o-day ‘sunday morning edition’ loop ga roop stuff. i almost gave up a few times, but i’m still doing these. i think after 2+ years it’s become an exercise in self assertion.

related to this- new e-cd single- ‘all perc here is robots’
http://zelwel.bandcamp.com/track/all-perc-here-is-robots

then there’s my new weekly podcast- here is a link to the first one which features a jam i put together at the hollywood lounge in aug 2010-
http://zelwel1.podomatic.com/entry/2013-04-21T06_07_41-07_00
even though things really began for me when mi yodea played out for the first time (5/24/2009) i realize i’ve been running around town making music since the late ’90′s and have recorded a lot of it. these podcasts will be based around archives from the fuzzy past to the here and now. the one i will be releasing next sunday will be based around the current version of mi yodea in rehearsal- playing old and new material. here’s a preview- http://www.zelwel.com/Apr_13/apr21_waterslide.mp3
it’s the combo of my tune ‘slide’ with the traditional tune ‘mayim’. we call it ‘waterslide’. that’s sue on dumbek and voice, ann on bougarabou, and me on keys.

and finally a haiku-

bad ambassador
the last one i would have chose
from here to not there.

take care y’all. and people…. book me and/ or hire me please. need work- preferably in my field. thank you world.