Leonard Cohen grew up in an influ­en­tial Jew­ish fam­i­ly in Mon­tre­al. And, dur­ing his final inter­view, he rem­i­nisced with The New York­er’s David Rem­nick about how the elder men in his fam­i­ly were the “dons” of Jew­ish Mon­tre­al, and how his grand­fa­ther “was prob­a­bly the most sig­nif­i­cant Jew in Canada”–someone who estab­lished numer­ous Jew­ish insti­tu­tions there, and helped count­less refugees escape the anti-Semit­ic pogroms in East­ern Europe.

Immi­grants from East­ern Europe them­selves, Leonard Cohen’s fam­i­ly undoubt­ed­ly spoke some Yid­dish, the lan­guage once spo­ken by 11 mil­lion Jews, most­ly in cen­tral and east­ern Europe. (Today it’s spo­ken by 600,000 peo­ple at best.) And that’s what makes this Yid­dish ren­di­tion of “Hal­lelu­jah” so fit­ting. Trans­lat­ed and per­formed by Klezmer musi­cian Daniel Kahn, it was post­ed to YouTube on the night of Cohen’s pass­ing.

For any­one inter­est­ed, it’s worth read­ing this oth­er The New York­er piece, “Leonard Cohen’s Mon­tre­al.”

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via The For­ward

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rufus Wain­wright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Street Artist Plays Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” With Crys­tal Glass­es

Mal­colm Glad­well on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Mak­ing of Elvis Costello’s “Depor­tee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Leonard Nimoy Recites Famous Solil­o­quy from Ham­let in Yid­dish: “To Be or Not To Be”

Watch Clas­sic Sein­feld Scenes Dubbed in …. Yid­dish

Update: After mak­ing the videos avail­able for a cou­ple of weeks, PBS has now tak­en them down. If you’re real­ly inter­est­ed in watch­ing Sound­break­ing, you can pur­chase it in DVD for­mat. It’s worth it.

From Novem­ber 14 through Novem­ber 23, PBS is air­ing an eight-part series, Sound­break­ing, which explores the art of record­ing music and the moments when new sounds were born. The series fea­tures “more than 160 orig­i­nal inter­views with some of the most cel­e­brat­ed record­ing artists of all time,” high­light­ing the “cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy” that trans­formed the way we make music. You can now stream 3 of the first 8 episodes online, with the rest soon to come. If there are any geo-restric­tions, we apol­o­gize in advance.

Watch the first episode, “The Art of Record­ing,” up top. Leg­endary pro­duc­ers like Bri­an Eno, Daniel Lanois, Quin­cy Jones, Tony Vis­con­ti, Rick Rubin and George Mar­tin all make appear­ances.

• Episode 2: Paint­ing With Sound (right above)
• Episode 3: The Human Instru­ment

A new episode should appear each day. To find them, click here and then scroll down.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

265 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

The Only Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong in a Record­ing Stu­dio: Watch the Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered Film (1959)

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Abbey Road Stu­dios, Cour­tesy of the New Google Site “Inside Abbey Road”

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

Things get­ting too seri­ous around here? You want it lighter? Here’s Metal­li­ca play­ing “Enter Sand­man” on class­room toy instru­ments. It fea­tures James Het­field on the toy clar­inet, Lars Ulrich on the Fish­er Price Drum and toy cym­bals, Kirk Ham­mett on the Melod­i­ca, and Robert Tru­jil­lo on the Baby Elec­tric Axe. They’re joined by Jim­my Fal­lon on the kazoo. Next up, stun­ning, breath­tak­ing time­lapse films of boats sail­ing through Venet­ian canals.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo Plays Metal­li­ca Songs Fla­men­co-Style, Joined by Rodri­go y Gabriela

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

We say good­bye to musi­cal icons in many dif­fer­ent ways, from flash­mobs, SNL intros, and long ret­ro­spec­tives to live con­cert trib­utes fea­tur­ing the biggest cov­er band on earth. No mat­ter how out­sized the ges­ture, it nev­er quite seems out of place when it comes to artists of a cer­tain stature. In the case of Frank Zap­pa, we’ve recent­ly seen jazz orches­tra trib­utes, a “mon­u­men­tal live per­for­mance” of one of his own orches­tral works, and sev­er­al Zap­pa trib­ute con­certs by his son Dweezil.

For all their heart and sta­mi­na, how­ev­er, no trib­ute can com­pete with the pow­er of those artists’ farewells to us. Both David Bowie and Leonard Cohen, too frag­ile to per­form in their last years, left phe­nom­e­nal albums we’ll pore over for decades to come. South­ern rock great Leon Rus­sell, who just passed away this week at 74, put on rol­lick­ing live shows into his final years, and had con­certs booked into 2017 when he died. Prince’s final per­for­mance was, like all of his per­for­mances, stun­ning.

And Zap­pa? Well see for your­self. Zap­pa played his way out of the world as he’d played his way into it, with sar­don­ic humor and blis­ter­ing vir­tu­os­i­ty.

As you can see at the top and above, Zap­pa and band deliv­ered on every promise in their last con­certs in Prague and Budapest in 1991. In the 10-minute clip at the top, Zappa’s impro­visato­ry prog gui­tar runs soar and dive over the band’s slink­ing jazz-reg­gae, then get more tech­ni­cal as he trades licks with anoth­er vir­tu­oso gui­tarist. In the low­er-qual­i­ty video above, with clips from both con­certs, Zap­pa and band dis­play their mas­tery of an East­ern Euro­pean-sound­ing march with their guest musi­cian “gyp­sy friends” in Hun­gary (at 9:00).

In the fol­low­ing two years, until his death in 1993, Zap­pa would become too weak to play as he suc­cumbed to prostate can­cer. In his final inter­views, he pro­nounced him­self “total­ly unre­pen­tant” for his life and career and insist­ed he had only ever been an “enter­tain­er.” And it’s true, what­ev­er else Zap­pa was—incredibly skilled gui­tarist, com­pos­er, and indus­try innovator—he was always, to the last cou­ple years of his life, an incred­i­ble show­man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In One of his Final Inter­views, Frank Zap­pa Pro­nounces Him­self “Total­ly Unre­pen­tant”

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Image by Rama, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve heard very few details about Leonard Cohen’s death this week, and that is by design. The Cohen fam­i­ly request­ed pri­va­cy for his funer­al and received it. While most out­lets report­ed that he passed away on Thurs­day night, he actu­al­ly died on Wednes­day and was buried on Thurs­day. This col­lec­tive gra­cious­ness on the part of the press comes, I’d say, at a time when lit­tle grace abounds. Grace is a word that I par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ciate with Cohen. He was a grace­ful man, always impec­ca­bly coiffed and dressed (his father was a tai­lor), his hand­some, hang­dog face nev­er any­thing but per­fect­ly direct.

For sev­er­al days before his death, New York­er edi­tor David Rem­nick sat down with Cohen for the first inter­view he’d giv­en in sev­er­al years. The poet and folk singer/songwriter leg­end had ter­mi­nal can­cer, we learn, and was con­fined to a med­ical chair. Nonethe­less, says Rem­nick, intro­duc­ing the edit­ed audio inter­view below, Cohen was “in an ebul­lient mood for a man… who knew exact­ly where he was going, and he was head­ed there in a hur­ry. And at the same time, he was incred­i­bly gra­cious. The most gra­cious host this side of my moth­er.” Cut to Cohen offer­ing him a few slices of cheese, and Rem­i­nick declin­ing.

Cohen kept his ill­ness secret (though he made allu­sions to it in a let­ter to his dying girl­friend Mar­i­anne this past sum­mer). Rem­nick reveals that he record­ed almost the entire­ty of his incred­i­ble final album You Want It Dark­er while con­fined to that chair. His voice rubbed raw with age, like John­ny Cash’s in his Amer­i­can Record­ings ses­sions, Cohen’s last songs car­ry all the spir­i­tu­al urgency and ragged vig­or of the best work of his career. Where did it come from? Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the first sub­ject in Rem­nick­’s inter­view is death. Cohen has been writ­ing about death since his first album in 1967.

He begins with his father’s death when he was nine, “a kind of ori­gin sto­ry for his career as a writer.”

The funer­al was held in our house. When we came down the stairs, the cof­fin was in the liv­ing room. And it was open. It was win­ter, you know. And I was think­ing, like, it must be hard to dig.

Remem­ber­ing this scene, Cohen’s Mon­tre­al accent strength­ens, then relax­es as he describes how, after the funer­al, he went to his father’s clos­et, cut a bow tie in half, wrote “some kind of farewell to my father” on the wing of the tie, and buried it in the back­yard. “It was just some attrac­tion to a rit­u­al response,” he says, “to an impos­si­ble event.”

This trag­ic vignette, and Cohen’s reflec­tion on it, is, as Rem­nick says, like a super­hero ori­gin sto­ry. With the same mea­sured, rhyth­mic voice and clear expres­sions as his songs, Cohen con­nects the mor­tal to the mys­te­ri­ous­ly divine act of writ­ing, which accom­plish­es “some kind of farewell” whose effects are unknown to us. What pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cance the act had for Cohen, he can­not say, but it was sim­ply the appro­pri­ate response. Cohen’s final album seemed to be the right response to his own death.

This dwelling on mor­tal­i­ty is of course huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant and in the fore­ground of this inter­view-slash-trib­ute from Rem­nick, but it isn’t a mor­bid piece at all. In a ret­ro­spec­tive of Cohen’s career, we learn how he went from an acclaimed but strug­gling poet and nov­el­ist to folk singer in 1967, and how crip­pling stage fright led to him drink­ing three bot­tles of wine before he per­formed. At a 1972 con­cert in Israel, Cohen apol­o­gized, left the stage part­way through a song, and dropped two hits of acid in his dress­ing room. The audi­ence began singing loud­ly, and he returned to sing “So Long, Mar­i­anne” while hal­lu­ci­nat­ing wild­ly.

The sto­ry is hilar­i­ous, told with the same dry wit that under­cuts all of Cohen’s obser­va­tions about sex, death, and God. For all the deep­ness we asso­ciate with Leonard Cohen, says Rem­nick, he seemed reluc­tant to ana­lyze his work in reli­gious terms. But when he does open up about it, he gives us a back­drop against which to under­stand much of his spir­i­tu­al phi­los­o­phy: prayers, he says, “are to remind God, it was once a har­mo­nious uni­ty.… “ as well as his writ­ing phi­los­o­phy: “I only know,” says Cohen, “that if I write enough vers­es, and keep dis­card­ing the slo­gans, even the hip ones, even the sub­tle ones, that some­thing will emerge that rep­re­sents.”

You can also lis­ten to Remnick’s New York­er Radio Hour pod­cast at the WNYC site (and above) and read Remnick’s arti­cle on his last meet­ings with Cohen at The New York­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Cohen Has Passed at Age 82: His New and Now Final Album Is Stream­ing Free Online

Leonard Cohen Plays a Spell­bind­ing Set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Fes­ti­val

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness