If you want to upset a Jewish musician who makes Jewish music, just call him a Jewish musician who makes Jewish music. Like it or not, the term “Jewish music” is not flattering to Jewish musicians. It’s got connotations of old-time schmaltz, of Zionist choirs singing “Heveinu Shalom Aleichem,” of fringe music written for a very specific — and very small — audience.
Musicians have fragile egos — the last thing they want to hear is that their music is of no interest to 99 percent of the listening public.
Well, I’m happy to say that I hung out the other day with a Jewish musician who’ll tell you flat out that he makes Jewish music. That he writes specifically for a Jewish audience. That he doesn’t dream of being in the Billboard Top 40 or performing at the Grammys. And that he’s happiest when his work inspires that miniscule slice of the buying public called the Jews.
His name is Sam Glaser.
For the past couple of decades, Glaser has been Mr. Jewish Music. Each year, he performs in Reform, Conservative and Orthodox communities in about 50 different cities. When he’s not performing or leading Shabbatons, he’s in his recording studio, where he recently completed his 20th album. His music is known for its spiritual ballads and solid rock beats, but there’s nothing wild and crazy about Glaser — the man or the musician.
Nothing, that is, except for his attachment to his neighborhood. If Springsteen had New Jersey and Dylan had Greenwich Village, Glaser has Pico-Robertson.
Over a long lunch at Shilo’s, the subject of his neighborhood kept interrupting talk of new songs, new projects, upcoming tours, etc. Right after telling me about his latest Purim adventure — performing for a Reform congregation at one of the oldest shuls in America in Charleston, S.C. — Glaser told me about his Shabbat ritual of taking a different route from shul every week.
These long neighborhood walks are made longer by his occasional neighborly stops: a single elderly man for whom he’ll sing “Shalom Aleichem,” Persian friends who’ll offer him rice in a multitude of colors, and incredible cooks, like his friend Debby Segura, who’ll insist he take home some of her homemade challah.
He said the neighborhood changed his life. He was a bohemian musician in the late 1980s and early 1990s, hanging out and surfing in Playa del Rey. Occasionally, he’d pop into Pico-Robertson, most often at the wild and near-legendary singles’ Shabbat table of Stuie Wax, another longtime neighborhood maestro.
It was during these visits, he said, that he tasted the warmth of the neighborhood and saw the possibility of making it his future home. It was also around then that he met his future wife, Shira, whom he married in 1993, just before they moved to Pico-Robertson.
It wasn’t just a physical move, it was also a spiritual one. He began learning Torah regularly — having 40-plus shuls within walking distance, he said, made it easy. While his home base has always been Aish HaTorah, where he had his first experience of serious Jewish learning, he’s one of the “shul hoppers” of the neighborhood. He especially loves the Happy Minyan, where many of his “musical brothers” hang out.
He said he’s so attached to the neighborhood that when he performs on the road, he introduces his shows by announcing, “I come from Pico-Robertson,” and then sharing neighborhood stories and bragging about things like “30-plus kosher restaurants within a mile radius, including three Chinese!” He even invites out-of-town audiences to his house for Shabbat meals and guided neighborhood tours, and over the years, more than a few people have taken him up on it.
On the surface, Glaser the artist seems neatly and perfectly defined: a Jewish musician from a Jewish neighborhood making Jewish music. Well, it turns out there’s a little more.
For one thing, I discovered something quirky about him: As soon as he gets up in the morning, he picks up a recorder and semiconsciously mumbles to himself music that he heard in his dreams the night before.
I couldn’t resist asking him if I could hear what music had come into his dreams the previous night. So, after lunch we went to his recording studio, which is behind his house, and he played me that day’s “morning mumble.” In his groggy voice, I actually heard him belt out this wild salsa beat, complete with horns, percussions and the best orchestral arrangements his mouth could simulate. It could have been the theme to “Mambo Kings.”
I came across other things that contradicted his image as the classic “Jewish musician.” He played me a song “that came to him” a couple of weeks ago after he heard that the father of his best friend had passed away. It was called “Then It’s Time,” and it had all the luscious feel and heartfelt lyrics of a Jason Mraz ballad.
When I asked him about the very first song he ever wrote, he went back several decades and played me a poem he wrote when he was 7, which he and his musician mother turned into a song. The song was about fighting pollution.
Glaser said he’s got hundreds of melodies, lyrical hooks and musical ideas stacked away in digital files, many of which are not particularly “Jewish.” He doesn’t seek them. They just come to him, mostly in his dreams.
He said he might “do something with all this material one day,” but he’s not sure. All he knows is that he’s grateful to have it.
Who knows, maybe all this “extra music” is God’s way of thanking him for proudly wearing the label of a “Jewish musician from a Jewish neighborhood who makes Jewish music to inspire the Jewish people.”
In the middle of the night, when this musician and his neighborhood are fast asleep, God brings him music that he can play one day for the rest of the world.
David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine, Meals4Israel.com and Ads4Israel.com. He can be reached at dsuissa@olam.org.
