Mash-Up! (A Tale of Two Songs)
“Sow in Tears” & “Hold Fast to Dreams”
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard a singer introduce a “mashup” and then proceed to sing two unrelated songs in succession. That, my friends, is a medley, not a mashup. A true mashup is when you sing or play two different songs at the same time. Medlies are ubiquitous. True mashups are rare.
The beauty of a mashup is the ability to tell two stories at the same time. Weaving (a nice way of saying mashing) two songs together allows them to speak to each other in dialog, revealing (when it works) yet a new story, perhaps a hidden meaning. My favorite example of a great mashup is from the late composer Jack Gottlieb (with whom I studied at HUC) whose sensitive combining of the American folk song “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” with “Hatikvah” makes you feel something in a way that transcends ordinary language.
See what I mean?
In the late 1970s I was serving in a student pulpit with the late Rabbi Chaim Stern. Chaim was a liturgist (he edited the “Gates of…” series of prayerbooks) and wrote hundreds of poems in liturgical style, many of which are still found in the pages of Mishkan T’filah. Over the years I set several of his poems to music, including “This Is Very Good” and “You Are Stormwind.”
Chaim was eclectic as well as imaginative. In one of his prayerbooks for children he placed two different poems on the same page, a visual mashup of sorts: The Bridge, by the Yiddish poet Solomon Blumgarten, (known as Yehoash), (photo) and Hold Fast to Dreams, by Langston Hughes, one of the great writers of the Harlem Renaissance (photo). Neither was credited on the page, and not recognizing either text at the time, I assumed they were somehow related. I proceeded to set them as one song, calling it ”Hold Fast to Dreams.”
Hold Fast to Dreams enjoyed a brief period of popularity, in NFTY, though it never reached the success of some of our other songs. But it remained a favorite of ours, and we titled our second album The Bridge in 1983. The song was fun to sing, with its flowing melody and decidedly 1980s folk-rock vibe. We liked the idea of connecting these two very different texts. After cranking out camp friendly Hebrew sing-alongs for several years, the rock anthem was new territory for us, and it helped pave the way for songs yet to come.
Fast forward to the early 2000s. Debbie Friedman, z”l, began singing a new song of hers called “Sow in Tears, Reap in Joy.” It was simple, yet powerful, connecting the Biblical psalms (Psalm 126) to the present day. Though it was written prior to 9/11, in the wake of September 11, 2001, her song became a comforting expression of our shared grief and hopes for the future.
Over the years “Sow in Tears” became one of those random tunes that seem to bubble up in my mind out of nowhere. (I don’t know about you, but there is usually some kind of music in my head at all times.) A few years ago I was silently singing “Sow in Tears,” when ”Hold Fast to Dreams” popped into my head. From then on I couldn’t think of either song with the other tagging along. I started to wonder if I could actually sing them together, in other words…a mashup.
Here’s a video of the piece as sung at Hava Nashira in 2022. Joining me is Merri Arian with Rabbi Ken Chasen on piano. The music can be found here.
(If you wish to perform it with your choir, please be sure to properly credit all the creators, and register the performance with J License.)
