Brainstorming post: 2016

[morbane]

As nominations will begin in approximately 4 days, this post is a place to bounce ideas around, gauge interest for your preferred songs & music videos & other pieces, and decide what to nominate.

You have 8 nominations this year. This and other rule updates are on AO3.

This post is also on LiveJournal - check the comments there as well.

Comments

[hagar_972]

I haven't decided what to request/offer this year yet, so this is totes me gauging interest :) There's way more than eight songs here!

English
Here Comes the Rain Again - Dikla Cover (Music Video). Admittedly I'd also take song-only on this cover, but I find the video to be full of things I like, such as women, longing, and mythical elements.

Urge to be Violent - Balkan Beat Box (Song). If you like M.I.A., you'll like BBB. If going for this song, I suggest trawling youtube for live versions, as well as exploring the album this song is from (2012's Give) more fully, as they were trying for an album-scale statement with that one (it came up in interviews).

Who By Fire - Maureen Nehedar & Rona Keinan Cover (Song). Because it takes a paytanit to honest-to-goodness approach this song (and put together the band that can take on it) and Rona Keinan is a vocal virtuoso. (That Hebrew at the end is the Avinu, Malkeinu prayer, best identified with Atonement Day. Where's the line "Who by fire, who by water" from? Right.)

Wildest Moments - Jessie Ware (Song). AKA this year's safety option. (Because let's face it, I'm an outlier around here.)


Instrumental
A composition in Dastgah-e Mahur - Maureen Nehedar (Instrumental). Yes, this also has a version with words, but my interest in this one here is for the gorgeous, gorgeous musicality rather than Yehuda Halevi's piyut.

Coming Back and/or Journey, both of them Mark Eliyahu's (Wikipedia). That how-did-I-not-know-it-was-missing-in-my-life instrument is Kamancha, and when Mark Eliyahu serendipitiously heard it the first time and fell absolutely in love with it, he didn't know it's a heritage instrument in his family. Either of those pieces makes a gorgeous mental canvas from which to draw a story.

Hebrew
מקהלה עליזה | Makhela Aliza | The Merry Choir - Chava Alberstein (Song): Link 1, Link 2. (It's the same singer in both vids, just several decades apart.) I'll be supplying a proper translation if nom'ing, but the tl;dr is that all the birds in town gather at the top of one cypress tree and start a choir. Then a fight breaks out because one bird refuses to sing without words, and a bunch of others refuse to have lyrics because they're confused enough already (this is a pun in Hebrew). Eventually, the cypress tells them to stop for the day because he has a headache already. The birds agree to continue the next day on top of the poplar (another pun). Cute, fun, catchy story-song that's more... accessible than my usual sort of a thing.

תרקדי | Tirkedi | Dance - Maya Avraham (Song) + translation. Pop. If you want the f/f, this is your song - look at this vid! (The song alone can be cool too, but.)

חלומות של אחרים | Chalomot Shel Acherim | Other People's Dreams - Idan Raichel Project (Song): studio (video), live at Yarqon Park 2014. I'll do a full translation if I end up nom'ing it, but this should give you a solid idea. The speaker in the song is sympathetic to the inner world of a woman who seems to have at least one of depression, burnout or PTSD; her character begs to be explored.

עד שתחזור | Ad she'Tachazor | Until Your Return - Yuval Dayan & Idan Rafael Haviv (Song). Translation & links to multiple versions here. (Though possibly the most arresting is Idan's solo live version, and I'd rec this Yuval solo over the older one.) Idan wrote and composed this song for himself, then Yuval somehow got him to gift it to her. On the surface it seems like yet another "woman waits for her male beloved to return" song (Hebrew is fully gendered that way), but the interaction between the two (and the specific verses Idan takes in the concert version, let alone the wider pattern of when he chooses to sing in the female person) make it into a song that's between peers, which - in my opinion - makes it all the more haunting. The multiple "canon" versions - the duet and both solos - further open it for interpretations.

Other
Habib Galbi - A-WA Cover (Music Video). Yemenite Arabic; you can find an English translation at the Haim Sisters' bandcamp page, here. You want women-centric folk tale/fairytale, this is the one for you. This is a traditional women's song; the Haim Sisters and their producer, Yomer Yosef, are of Yemenite Jewish decent (as in, within living memory). The dance form of the male dancers in the vid is called "Yemenite Step", and it's a traditional form of Yemenite Jewish men.

...and apparently that's the only one of my neither-English-nor-Hebrew songs that made it this year. Huh.

[zdenka]

Oh wow. I haven't had time to listen to all these songs yet, but you definitely have my attention with the "Who By Fire" cover. I was thinking about nominating the original Cohen song (as you can see if you look on the LJ side), and the thing that first got me interested in it was the connection to the High Holy Days prayer. If you're sure you'll nominate this one, I'll leave off mine and request this version instead. (Or I could nominate it if you like, if you're short on slots.)

[hagar_972]

I did see!

I don't have my Top Eight yet. There's *count* three I really want and the Designated Safety Choice, and the rest depends on what other people'll show interest in. So we'll see how it plays out, I suppose?

...and do dig through Maureen Nehedar's channel. She's at least as amazing a composer as she is a performer.

[ardyforshort]

+1 on interest in the Cohen cover.