Sunday Night Tomfoolery (12)

The melody's origins are from Ukraine and now played throughout the world, the song Hava Nagila is sung in Hebrew and the title literally means Let's Rejoice. According to "the site that knows all", Wiki indicates that the text to the song was probably composed in 1918 to celebrate the British victory in Palestine, during World War 1.

Legandary singer, Harry Belafonte, was well known for singing Hava Nagila as a standard during his performances. Hear is an early video of Harry and Danny Kaye performing the song as a duet..



Sunday Night Tomfoolery, however, seeks out the strange and the unusual.

The first cab off the rank is Dick Dale (descibed as the Jimi Hendrix of surf music) and his Del-tones from his 1963 album "King of the Surf Guitar".



Chubby Checker released this version in 1963, combining it with his Number 1 hit, The Twist.



I could subject you to Hava Nagila being played on the accordian, but I wont (there are just too many versions of this on accordian to be found on YouTube. Just don't go there.)

I'll also spare you Andre Rieu's version. He has too much exposure already. And the audience has way too much difficulty in clapping in time to the music.

This next clip can only be seen once, if only to work out how The Four Squeezins play Hava Nagila.



Anyone who is familiar with the Monty Python hit movie, Life of Brian, will possibly understand the humour in this next version, played on bagpipes.



I don't think I have previously featured any banjo playing on this blog. This will only happen on rare occasions, such as this Clawhammer Cello Banjo player playing, um, you know:



1963 must have been the year of Hava Nagila. Here is another 1963 release, this time by Swedush group The Spotnicks:



This one just wrong on so many levels. Apologies for the poor video quality. Here is a Bollywood interpretation of this song:



Yes, I have a brass ensemble arrangement, or to be more precise a low brass arrangement, performed by Ithaca College Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble, complete with poorly timed clapping:



This one is truly annoying. Hava Nagila is sung from about the one minute mark. Before that time, prepare to be entertained by cats singing What Child Is This:



And yes, I have painted myself into a corner this week. Unfortunately that means that animals singing songs will be next week's Tomfoolery, unless I can come up with a better topic.