4 panel gatefold wallet with a single pocket printed in full colour on recycled coated stock with matt cello finish. Photography care of Alex Weltlinger, Barnabas Imre and Gabor Balogh. Artwork care of Dean Burton and Ella Egidy.
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Concepts behind 'The Four Questions' by Zohar's Nigun (interview with Daniel Weltlinger, September 2012):
This first track is deliberately tense sounding and unresolved. This song was composed by Naomi Shemer in 1967 after the 6 day war, and was composed what's more during a particularly nationalistic time in Israel's history. I played around with the harmonisation of the song by taking certain phrases and sections of the song and taking ages to resolve to the next chord. The track has a sad waltz feel - like being totally lost in the world - and this is symbolic of the endless strife in the middle east, of being in the diaspora, the contested issue of Jerusalem, the importance of Jerusalem in Jewish tradition for thousands of years - basically many unresolved conflicting feelings. The fact of the matter is that even though many Jews live in the secular world and are far removed from Israel and the continuing conflict, all Jews are traditionally meant to face the direction of Jerusalem when they pray. Jerusalem is mentioned many many times in the Jewish 'Tanach' and it is actually a centre piece of Jewish culture. Jews say 'Next Year in Jerusalem' every year at Passover which I always feel is such a strange phrase but we nethertheless traditionally say it. It is such a convoluted concept, and it is so old and so fragile this concept of the Jewish home land, Jerusalem, etc and yet it is so sad the situation in the middle east (i.e. how much it seems to continue to spiral) with most Jews from way back pretty much all having come from this land yet today conflicted by varying feelings and opinions on the political situation there, not to mention their own place in the whole story of the Jewish people etc...
lyrics
English:
The mountain air is clear as wine
And the scent of pines
Is carried on the breeze of twilight
With the sound of bells.
And in the slumber of tree and stone
Captured in her dream
The city that sits solitary
And in its midst is a wall.
Jerusalem of gold,
and of bronze, and of light
Behold I am a violin
for all your songs.
We have returned to the cisterns
To the market and to the market-place
A ram’s horn (shofar) calls out
(i.e. is being heard) on the Temple Mount
In the Old City.
And in the caves in the mountain
Thousands of suns shine -
We will once again descend to the Dead Sea
By way of Jericho!
Jerusalem of gold,
and of bronze and of light
Behold I am a violin for all your songs.
But as I come to sing to you today,
And to adorn crowns to you (i.e. to tell your praise)
I am the smallest of the youngest
of your children (i.e. the least worthy of doing so)
And of the last poet (i.e. of all the poets born).
For your name scorches the lips
Like the kiss of a seraph
If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Which is all gold…
Jerusalem of gold,
and of bronze, and of light
Behold I am a violin for all your songs.
Hebrew:
Avir harim zalul kayayin
Ve-rei'ah oranim
Nissa be-ru'ah ha'arbayim
Im kol pa'amonim
