Candlelight The Maccabeats—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘25

                                                                                 Candlelight by The Maccabeats.

This might be the most popular contemporary Hanukkah song with over 15 million YouTube views since it was released more than 20 years ago by The Maccabeats.  It has since become a mainstay in Jewish religious education and music classes for its hip retelling of the Maccabean rebellion against the Greeks and the customs surrounding the observance of the Miracle of the Temple Lamp.

A hip retelling if the story of the Maccbees who whooped Seleucid Greek ass and reconquered Jerusalem after a long, bloody war.  Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the Temple Lamp burning for eight days although only one day's worth of ritually purified oil was on hand.

Candlelight was the first of what became annual holiday videos by The Maccabeats, then students at the Orthodox Yeshiva University in New York City.  The 14 member a cappella group was organized by Julian (Chaim) Horowitz in 2007.  By 2010 the were in the university’s graduate school when they released their first CD, Voices from the Heights which was underwritten by a grant from the school.  The album initially sold only 5,000 copies but their Hanukkah video attracted two million hits in its first ten days.  The group was invited to sing at both the Israeli Knesset and twice at Barack Obama’s White House.

Now all graduated, members married, started secular careers, and moved all over the country but they continue to meet virtually weekly to rehearse and record.  A quartet of the members makes personal appearances.  

In 2015 they released an EP collection of their first five Hanukkah songs, A Maccabeats Hanukkah.  

All 14 members of the Orthodox Jewish  a capella group The Maccabeats. 

Candlelight is a parody of Mike Tompkins’ a cappella music video for Taio Cruz’s Dynamite.  The video was directed by fellow Yeshiva student Uri Westrich who left medical school to pursue a career in filmmaking and continues to direct all of The Maccabeats’ videos.

Bohemian Chanukah— The Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival

                                                        Bohemian Chanukah by Six13.

Note—It’s a two-fer today so we can celebrate the eighth and final night of Hanukkah!

Elaborate parodies have become very popular for Hanukkah in recent years. 

Jewish a cappella group Six13.

Six13 is a groundbreaking, six-man a cappella vocal band bringing new style and energy to Jewish music.  Eight award-winning albums have landed Six13 among the top Jewish music artists on iTunes and Spotify. Music from those albums has been adapted by choirs worldwide, played on mainstream radio across the globe, and selected for ten “best-of” compilations.  They have awards from the Harmony Sweepstakes and the Contemporary A Cappella Society of America and were three-time finalists for NBC’s prime-time The Sing-Off.

                                        Six13's Hanukkah album.

Bohemian Chanukah appeared on the group’s 2018 album The Chanukah Collection when the Academy Award winning film Bohemian Rapsody starring Rami Malek was reviving interest in Queen and Freddy Mercury.  The group picked it as the song for the eighth and last night.

Twelve Days of ChristmasCovid Edition—Murfin’s Carols for Corona and Winter Holiday Music Festival

                                                        Twelve Days of Christmas Covid Edition by Jon + Jon.

It was inevitable.  Coronavirus Christmas songs and parodies I mean.  I easily found a dozen on YouTube and there were many more, mostly homemade and amateur.  Celebs and semi-celebs posted professional videos featuring original songs—Justin Bieber and a choir made up of British National Health Service workers collaborated on a charity song and video a remix of the star’s single Holy, Covid Christmas by rapper Trisha Paytas, and Disinfects the Halls by mid-level country star Chris Stapleton off of a whole album of pandemic Christmas music.  But parodies by YouTube stars dominate.

It is quite fitting that The Twelve Days of Christmas, the holiday song once voted the “most annoying,” was satirized by several performers each with their own take.  I understand why a lot of folks were irked by the original, but my personal list of annoying and/or detestable holiday songs include Dominick the Donkey, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, and is capped by the loathsome Christmas Shoes.  Be that as it may, The Twelve Days of Christmas is long and repetitive, just like days of Covid-19 isolation.

From several possible candidates I plucked one by a duo called Jon + Jon about who may be affiliated with the New Life Church in Eugene, Oregon.   I otherwise know nothing about them, but here is their take, Twelve Days of Christmas Covid Edition.

Candlelight The Maccabeats—Murfin ’s Carols for Corona and Winter Holiday Music Festival

                                            Candlelight by The Maccabeats.

One more for Hanukkah!  This might be the most popular contemporary Hanukkah song with over 15 million YouTube views since it was released 20 years ago by The Maccabeats.  It has since become a mainstay in Jewish religious education and music classes for its hip retelling of the Maccabean rebellion against the Greeks and the customs surrounding the observance of the Miracle of the Temple Lamp.

A hip retelling if the story of the Maccbees who whooped Seleucid Greek ass and reconquered Jerusalem after a long, bloody war.  Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the Temple Lamp burning for eight days although only one day's worth of ritually purified oil was on hand.

Candlelight was the first of what became annual holiday videos by The Maccabeats, then students at the Orthodox Yeshiva University in New York City.  The 14 member a cappella group was organized by Julian (Chaim) Horowitz in 2007.  By 2010 the were in the university’s graduate school when they released their first CD, Voices from the Heights which was underwritten by a grant from the school.  The album initially sold only 5,000 copies but their Hanukkah video attracted two million hits in its first ten days.  The group was invited to sing at both the Israeli Knesset and twice at Barack Obama’s White House.

Now all graduated, members married, started secular careers, and moved all over the country but they continue to meet virtually weekly to rehearse and record.  A quartet of the members makes personal appearances. 

In 2015 they released an EP collection of their first five Hanukkah songs, A Maccabeats Hanukkah. 

All 14 members of the Orthodox Jewish  a capella group The Maccabeats. 

Candlelight is a parody of Mike Tompkins’ a cappella music video for Taio Cruz’s Dynamite.  The video was directed by fellow Yeshiva student Uri Westrich who left medical school to pursue a career in filmmaking and continues to direct all of The Maccabeats’ videos. 

The Liar Tweets Tonight—Murfin Home Confinement Music Festival 2020

The Liar Tweets Tonight by Ron Zimmerman and the ReZisters.

I have posted no overtly political songs so far in the Murfin Home Confinement Music Festival or any of the several satires created for the Coronavirus epidemic that have been posted all over social media and YouTube.  Instead I have preferred to harvest and present existing sounds in various genres that in some way speak to our present condition.  But Roy Zimmerman’s fresh new video The Liar Tweets Tonight is to spot on and hilarious to pass up.

Roy Zimmerman on stage.

Zimmerman has often been compared to Tom Lehrer over his thirty-year career—topical, insightful, and hilarious.  His songs have also been compared to the long-running ensemble revues by the Capital Steps but that group plays for those in power in Washington and the media insiders who watch them and must tread lightly to avoid seriously offending the powerful or offering and really radical commentary.  Zimmerman does not care whose toes are trampled and is unapologetically on the Left.

Zimmerman's wife and collaborator Melanie Harby.

He co-writes most of his songs with his wife Melanie Harby, a three-time West Coast bluegrass guitar champion and an actress/singer in the original cast of Quilters on Broadway.  In addition to their satirical songs Zimmerman and Harby have also written hundreds of children’s songs for Disney, Warner Bros, Looney Tunes, and McGraw and Hill.

Zimmerman's most recent album.

Zimmerman has produced 19 albums, most recently Rize Up, and tours relentlessly playing on college campuses, coffee houses and folk clubs, and very frequently Unitarian Universalist churches.  A couple of years ago he played at the Tree of Life UU Congregation in McHenry, Illinois.  He says that he:

…brings laughter and encouragement to the Blue Dots—the most progressive people in some of the least progressive places in the nation. I get accused of preaching to the converted, but that’s not how I think of it. I think of it as entertaining the troops.