Jerusalem Blues

Original language

English

Music and words

Walter J. Kin

Selected release

8 August 2018

Jerusalem is an original English song by Walter J. Kin, also presented in the project as Jerusalem Blues. The distributor-published recording selected here is titled Jerusalem (Jewish, the Musical), credited to RIGLI and Chris Hales, with Hales as producer and Kin as composer and lyricist. Its stated release date is 8 August 2018.

A release date establishes when that edition appeared, not the exact day the song was written.

The song speaks through a person imprisoned far from Jerusalem. This is a dramatic situation: the words do not name a particular prison, historical arrest or real prisoner. The speaker addresses God directly and asks why suffering and separation have happened.

Jewish language and the longing for Jerusalem shape a new work rather than supplying proof that it translates an older song.

The clear day is a striking detail. Visibility should make a distant place easier to see, yet even good weather cannot overcome the separation. The city is absent from sight but present in repeated speech. Each return to its name makes longing audible without adding a new event to the story.

The lyric uses Adonai within its English address to God. The repeated questions hold together complaint, faith and a need for an answer. Calling the work a lament helps explain that tension: the speaker continues to address the one from whom an explanation is sought. The song leaves space for that unresolved address.

Near the end, the recurring words about next year turn the voice toward a future reunion without narrating an escape. Listen to the change from asking why to naming a hoped-for time. The selected recording is in English.

This Russian article explains the work and its release; it is not a Russian vocal version, and no older Hebrew or Yiddish composition has been established as its original.

Credits & rights

Performer RIGLI and Chris Hales

Music Walter J. Kin

Lyrics Walter J. Kin

Language English

Publisher Rigli Publishing (Walter J. Kin)

Rights owner Rigli Publishing

Licensing Rigli Publishing

Copyright Registered (SR0000891442)

Free to sing, free to teach

These songs are free for synagogues, JCCs, museums, schools, yeshivas and families. For everyone else, free to start, and a modest fee later, so the songs travel and take root.

Questions, or a use we have not thought of? Write to doublesign28@gmail.com.

More about the wider Jewish Songs. For All project at havanagila.org.

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