David Broza

I went to Jewzapallooza today in Riverside Park for the David Broza concert. I love his music - it's so chill, it makes me feel calm and alive when I hear him. This is the second time I've heard him in concert - he didn't play for so long this time, maybe 45 minutes, but I was right up front, and he sounded awesome. Looked a lot older than last time I saw him, 3 or 4 years ago, but I guess a lot has happened since then.

I didn't know about half of the songs he played, but they were all great. Mitachat La'Shamayim (under the heavens) is probably the most beautiful love song I know, in any language. I remember, every time I hear it, the one play I was in in college, when we played it during a scene where the entire cast was dancing in slow motion. It was Romeo and Juliet, and this was the scene where Romeo and Juliet first meet. We're all dancing, slowly, perfectly, and suddenly, Romeo and Juliet spot each other, from across the room (or in this case, because the play was staged outside, across the field), and move towards each other. We're all dancing, and the music is playing so softly, so slowly, and Romeo and Juliet are moving towards each other, and then they touch, just their hands, like touching a mirror.

I wasn't Romeo (or Juliet) in the play, by the way. I was the Prince. A perfect role for me.

The Broza concert, though, is what I was writing about. That song was great. And then he closed with his most famous song, Yiheyeh Tov (it will be good), which is also beautiful, but overplayed, and has become something of a modern classic Israeli peace song. I always think the narrator of the song - who keeps repeating, loosely translated, in the chorus, "It will be good, it will be good, yes, it will be good of this I swear" - is a lot like the narrator of Keats's Ode to a Grecian Urn, who constently repeats the phrase "oh happy...oh happy, happy". Indicating, of course, that things are not happy. I love that idea, that too much of something means its opposite. It's often true. With the Broza song, as well. Maybe. And I think he understands that. Maybe.