Comments on: If I Had Wings (in Yiddish)

If I Had Wings (in Yiddish)

barmaljova — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:53:39 -0800

If I only had wings, I would fly to you... If I had chains, I would pull you to me... Just open up my heart, you'll see that it's dark and heavy with my love to you... Late last night, we wanted to capture the intimacy and quiet sparkle of this old song ... Hope it brings you a moment of peace and loveliness... This is a Yiddish folk song from a songbook collected by the great ethnomusicologist Moishe Beregovski. Performed by Inna (voice) & Ljova (viola) Translation from Yiddish: If I had wings, I would fly to you And if I had chains, I would pull you to me On that side of the river, on that side of the bank The boughs are bent There, there stands my sweetheart with tearful eyes Oh stop weeping, stop wailing You will accomplish nothing with tears Open up my heart - you'll see that it's black You'll know how much I love you

By: melissa may

melissa may — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:18:46 -0800

This just couldn't be any lovelier. The singing is beautiful, and "intimate" is the perfect word to to describe its quality.

I grew up listening to my grandparents speak Yiddish and it's been many years since I got to hear it at any length, so it was also personally moving to me to hear this song, with which I was totally unfamiliar. I would love to get my hands on the songbook you mention so if you know of a link or resource and would post it I'd be grateful.

Thanks so much for posting this.

By: sleepy pete

sleepy pete — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:37:27 -0800

What mm said, except my grandparents didn't speak Yiddish. This is really beautiful.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 10:36:55 -0800

Yow. Gorgeous.

By: barmaljova

barmaljova — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:04:14 -0800

thanks to all! link to the book with Beregovski song collection: Old Jewish Folk Music: The Collections and Writings of Moshe Beregovski at Amazon.com

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:21:17 -0800

What melissa may, sleepy pete and cortex said, plus all sorts of compliments. Beautiful, beautiful song.

By: ORthey

ORthey — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:44:35 -0800

Wow, this is quite beautiful. Please add the NotInEnglish tag please! It needs new languages.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:45:08 -0800

Gorgeous. Thanks to Inna and Ljova, and to melissa may for telling me about it.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:01:33 -0800

Absolutely beautiful. Thank you for posting this!

Wow.

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:25:08 -0800

One question, do you know the name in Yiddish by any chance?

By: edlundart

edlundart — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:45:28 -0800

This is a wonderful vocal performance and recording! And the picked viola is all kinds of awesome too. To my ear it seems technically skilled yet loose and quirky. Really good stuff.

By: salishsea

salishsea — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:24:59 -0800

I love your dynamic range in this song...if your voice had wings, it would do exactly what it's doing now: flying round me.

Lovely!

By: Pallas Athena

Pallas Athena — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 21:41:38 -0800

just so beautiful.