The Holiday Music Fest 2021

Since we're now into Hanukkah, we're going to continue with yet another Hanukkah song to keep the Festival of Lights going right.  There aren't all that many Hanukkah songs around, but we have a few that I'll be posting.

At this point, this may be one of the best known of recent years, "Hanukkah in Santa Monica," written by the great Tom Lehrer.  What most people don't know is that he wrote the song for an appearance on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor.  I remember the first time I heard it while actually in Santa Monica.  It was an odd, wonderful and somewhat ethereal experience

Here he is with his own song -- though with a slight difference.  Usually Tom Lehrer accompanies himself with a solo piano.  But for the APHC appearance, the show's music director Rich Dworsky did an arrangement that has a Klezmer-like feel which makes the song all the more fun.
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And we have a couple of bonuses.

Because the song has slowly gained in awareness over the years, there have been a few wonderful other renditions of it.  And this by the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles is one of the more fun for reasons which will soon become clear as they throw themselves into it full-bore.  And though the group isn't based specifically in Santa Monica, it's all Los Angeles County and just a few miles away.  So, they get a few bonus points to add to the charm.

And one final bonus.  This is the song performed about as appropriately as one could wish -- not just with a Klezmer-like feel, but by an actual Klezmer band, this group being Art of Time.  My only quibble with the otherwise great performance is that the lead singer gets a couple words wrong, which isn't a huge deal in such an otherwise vibrant performance, except that they're rhymes.  Other than that -- mazel tov!