I love the Internet: In search of the lost song
When I was in my teens, I spent one summer at a Hebrew immersion summer camp program with around 60 others at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin (usually referred to as OSRUI or Oconomowoc, for obvious reasons). I'd been up there many times before for the family Thanksgiving retreat our temple sponsored every year, but my main summer camp was Newaygo (see previous post), with a couple of summers at Girl Scout Camp Norwesco.
But for some reason, I ended up at OSRUI that summer. It was a remarkable experience, though I will always regret missing that summer at Newaygo, since I would have been a "last-year camper," and there's something magic about that.
One of the things that made that summer special was music after meals. Just like Newaygo, OSRUI had song leaders who led singing after every meal. Our unit's song leader was Debbie Friedman, who later became well known in Jewish music circles for all the music she wrote, much of it new tunes to classic liturgical words. That summer, her first album (Sing Unto God)was just about to come out, and she taught us most of the songs from the album.
She also taught us a bunch of other songs. One of them was, we thought, a nigun -- a song without words. It was all "la la la," with a fairly complicated tune. Once we got that down, she informed us that it was actually a round, and then we had to learn to sing it in two parts. And then once we learned that, she told us the song actually had words. Not many, and they repeated a lot, but the title was "Hodu La Sultan." It was great fun once we had it down pat.
That was over 40 years ago. Since then, I've sung it to myself from time to time, but I've never found anyone else who remembered the song. Even people I asked who were in the same program remembered it vaguely, but couldn't sing it, at least not as a round. A group of us used to have round-singing parties in Minneapolis, and every time I got about 10 seconds into singing the song to try to teach it, people's eyes would glaze over. At one point I wondered if it was a bit of classical music that Debbie Friedman had set the words to herself, which would explain the obscurity.
Today, I thought to search Google for "Hodu La Sultan." It turns out it's an Israeli round dating back at least to the 1960s. Even better, I found a site that had a recording of people singing the song. And, remarkably, my memory hadn't done much to the folk process. I had the tune pat, and only two words wrong -- which, considering that my Hebrew is limping at best (so I was mostly relying on rote memorization), is pretty remarkable.
If anyone is curious, here's the site. I don't think there's any way to link directly to "Hodu La Sultan," but you can scroll down in the old-time radio graphic to the right song.
And if anyone ever feels like learning it, I'd love to have someone else to sing it with.
But for some reason, I ended up at OSRUI that summer. It was a remarkable experience, though I will always regret missing that summer at Newaygo, since I would have been a "last-year camper," and there's something magic about that.
One of the things that made that summer special was music after meals. Just like Newaygo, OSRUI had song leaders who led singing after every meal. Our unit's song leader was Debbie Friedman, who later became well known in Jewish music circles for all the music she wrote, much of it new tunes to classic liturgical words. That summer, her first album (Sing Unto God)was just about to come out, and she taught us most of the songs from the album.
She also taught us a bunch of other songs. One of them was, we thought, a nigun -- a song without words. It was all "la la la," with a fairly complicated tune. Once we got that down, she informed us that it was actually a round, and then we had to learn to sing it in two parts. And then once we learned that, she told us the song actually had words. Not many, and they repeated a lot, but the title was "Hodu La Sultan." It was great fun once we had it down pat.
That was over 40 years ago. Since then, I've sung it to myself from time to time, but I've never found anyone else who remembered the song. Even people I asked who were in the same program remembered it vaguely, but couldn't sing it, at least not as a round. A group of us used to have round-singing parties in Minneapolis, and every time I got about 10 seconds into singing the song to try to teach it, people's eyes would glaze over. At one point I wondered if it was a bit of classical music that Debbie Friedman had set the words to herself, which would explain the obscurity.
Today, I thought to search Google for "Hodu La Sultan." It turns out it's an Israeli round dating back at least to the 1960s. Even better, I found a site that had a recording of people singing the song. And, remarkably, my memory hadn't done much to the folk process. I had the tune pat, and only two words wrong -- which, considering that my Hebrew is limping at best (so I was mostly relying on rote memorization), is pretty remarkable.
If anyone is curious, here's the site. I don't think there's any way to link directly to "Hodu La Sultan," but you can scroll down in the old-time radio graphic to the right song.
And if anyone ever feels like learning it, I'd love to have someone else to sing it with.