Zinguala

August 25, 2018 7:13 PM

Yehuda Poliker is an Israeli musician. Here he is singing Zinguala. This is his website. Here is a collection of some of his songs on Youtube.
posted by growabrain (11 comments total)

Here is a 2 hour concert from July 2017
posted by growabrain at 7:59 PM on August 25, 2018

Zinguala is a lesser known. He has a masterpiece album back in 1988 called "efer veavak" that deals with the holocaust memory and hailed as the most significant israeli rock album of all times. Penned with his partner Yaakov gilad. Both are the first big out of the closet first class musicians in Israel. Poliker was also a vocalist for the 80s band Benzin (Foreigner like)

Album is here
posted by avi111 at 11:09 PM on August 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Zinguala is just one of his plenty greek cover songs. His 1985 debut was a full one. Poliker is a greek jew and plays Buzuki in most of his songs. Poliker was one of the leaders of the oriental new wave movement in israel 80s.

"My eyes"
posted by avi111 at 11:28 PM on August 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thank you @avi111 - I just discovered him, will listen to your links
posted by growabrain at 2:44 AM on August 26, 2018

Zinguala is a song with a story. Originally written by Stelios Kazantzidis (the Elvis of Greek "laika" music at the time) and released in 1959, Zinguala is an exoticized version of Singoalla, a 1949 Franco-Swedish movie, based on a Swedish novel published in 1857, and translated in English as "The Wind is my Lover". As w/p notes the story of the film is based a medieval legend of the love between a gypsy and a nobleman. The cinematic gypsy in question, the Singoalla who inspired Zinguala, was Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors. Five years earlier than Kazantzidis another icon of Greek music, Manolis Chiotis, realeased his own tribute to Singoalla, a bluesy alternate Zinguala.
And of course Singoalla also inspired a Swedish Opera.
This is something like global stochastic cultural propagation before the Internet era: from medieval romance, to a swedish language romantic novel in the 19th century, to a French produced movie a century later, to a Greek pop hit immediately afterwords, that was transplanted to Israel in the 21st century!
posted by talos at 3:02 AM on August 26, 2018 [6 favorites]

@growabrain one more quicklink is his 1990 multi-platinum album "hurts but less" which was definitely one of the 1990s best sellers in israel, and was eventually the height of his work commercially. Poliker is known both for his vocal and instrumental tunes, for instance this is one of his well-known instrumentals from the 1990 album.

Sadly his music declined during the 1990s due to personal tragedies (two nephews died). one of his best instrumentals "Jacob's Ledder" opened his next album on 1992, the one of "Zinguala", and penned in memoriam of his nephew. this was his last worthful album in my opinion.

@talos, I thought associatively that Zingualla was a take-off on Zingarella which was a big hit both in original and in the translated version among the greek music lovers.

The footprint of Poliker's music on the israeli taste is very remarkable, since he was one of the pioneers for fusing the levantine Sephardi tradition into the european pop mainstream music. Meir Banai is one more example, produced by Ofra Haza's ghost-producer Izhar Ashdot, (this one produced by Arik Rudich). Ethnix was the most prominent one. This genre worth a separate discussion.
posted by avi111 at 4:07 AM on August 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

From my childhood, presenting Aris San’s Boompam...
posted by growabrain at 4:18 AM on August 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

You probably know the Boompam band
posted by avi111 at 4:23 AM on August 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you dont read hebrew, I recommend songs 12, 47, and 117 in the playlist. The first two are from the Benzin era. The last is a song I believe he wrote for Gidi Gov.

I can't find the album version of Yom Shishi in the playlist, which sounds like Israeli Beach Boys. There is a live version in the playlist, but it's not as good as the recorded version IMHO.
posted by wittgenstein at 2:03 PM on August 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Benzin's "Mishmeret Layla" sounds too-much like Duran duran's "Girls on film"
posted by avi111 at 2:01 PM on August 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

@avi111 here is a previous thread I posted here about another Israeli singer...
posted by growabrain at 8:38 PM on August 27, 2018