The “festival of lights” morphed into a festival of music, as David Chevan and friends summoned a century’s worth of Yiddish, Hebrew and English Hanukkah tunes to make the holiday new.
Chevan, a local bassist and bandleader best known for co-founding the Afro-Semitic Experience, celebrated the third day of Hanukkah in the WNHH radio studio with vocalist Jackie Sidle and fiddler Brian Slattery (aka the New Haven Independent’s arts editor and WNHH’s assistant station manager). On a special “Hanukkah House Party” edition of “Dateline New Haven,” they brought songs, stories, and reflections on what the holiday has meant for Jews over the ages: A celebration of the underdog? Militarism? Light and revelation? Miracles?
Chevan spoke of growing up as the only “out” Jew in his Amherst, Mass., school — and how Hanukkah offered a chance to celebrate his own heritage. He spoke of his great-grandfather who ran an inn in Eastern Europe, before the Holocaust, when villagers of all backgrounds gathered to enjoy Jewish music in his establishment on Hannukah. He explored the role music plays in a people’s liberation from tyranny.
And most of all, he, Sidle and Slattery played that music.
Click on or download the above sound file to hear the full “Dateline” episode. Click on the video at the top of the story to watch some of the musical performance.
Paul Bass Photo
Slattery, Sidle and Chevan in the studio.
And head to the Outer Space Wednesday night starting at 7 to celebrate the fourth night of the holiday with Chevan’s band of “Balkan Spies” with latkes, an adult version of the dreidel game, and lots more of the music they performed on the air.
Wednesday’s “Dateline New Haven” was made possible in part through support from Gateway Community College.