If it's December....

Welp, I just flipped my wall calendar (I'm old-fashioned that way) over to December, which means it must be time for my parade of Jewish winter-holiday-season music. Chanukah songs, yes, and an even larger number of Christmas/generalized-winter-holiday-season songs written by Jews. (And should I run across some Kwanza songs written by Jews, I will very definitely include them!)

I've started with this song for the past several years because it makes such a nice segue from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, especially since based on my email inbox, both Black Friday and Cyber Monday have continued just-all-week-long. The song? "The Christmas Can-Can," music by Jacques Offenbach (with a judicious amount of mash-up), lyrics and arrangement by Walter Chase, sung by Straight No Chaser:

Video by Straight No Chaser

As noted above, Walter Chase (originally Walter Shilanskas) wrote the lyrics and arranged the piece. Is he Jewish? Well, in his band member bio, Chase lists "Jewish guy" as one of his trademarks, and he certainly represents for the Chanukah-celebrating crowd in the video above. And then there are those Chanukah-referencing lyrics, which makes it partially a Chanukah song, so it sneaks in that way, too.

But wait, there's more!

The music is, as the title of the song cleverly suggests, largely taken from the piece best known as "Can-Can" by Offenbach. The piece was originally titled "Infernal Galop" from the operetta Orpheus in the Underworld:

(Start at about 1:00 for the part you'll recognize.)

Frankly, if a piece of music is referred to, however informally, by the name of a cheerfully risqué dance, it seems to positively invite reuse, and in fact it's been reused a LOT. To me it always brings to mind ShopRite Can Can sales rather than either a music hall dance or the Underworld--there's fame for you!

And Jacques Offenbach--originally named Jacob or possibly Jakob--was Jewish. He converted to Catholicism as an adult, since that was the only way he could marry his (Catholic) wife, and what his cantor father had to say about that no one seems to know. (But wouldn't you like to?)

Jacques had a remarkably successful career as a cellist, conductor, theater owner, director, producer, and composer--it makes fascinating reading, you should take a look--especially remarkable because he was both Jewish and German, and he had his successes in the France, Vienna, and England of the 19th Century, none of which were known for their lack of anti-Semitism (except as compared to Germany) or their Germanophilia (at least in France and Great Britain; I confess I have no knowledge about Viennese attitudes toward Germans during that period).

And so we begin!

* * *

My thanks for my December series to Nate Bloom, who wrote an often-updated piece about "The Jews Who Wrote Christmas Songs" on InterfaithFamily.com and who wrote "All those Holiday/Christmas Songs: So Many Jewish Songwriters!" on Jewish World Review,", both of which I borrow from freely in later December posts.

*In case you want to read more about Offenbach:
Wikipedia
Britannica.com
AllMusic
The Wikipedia article is quite long and detailed, and includes an impressive list of biographies in the Sources section.