Music Monday on Monday: Ot Azoy

Perhaps we’ve had enough lyrics for now. “Ot Azoy” does have a couple of lines of lyric, although mostly it’s just the title, which depending on how you say it can mean either that’s the way! (uh-hunh,uh-hunh) or what a world!. I was listening to Bagels and Fraylox, a Williamsburg (VA) band. We heard them perform this song at a local coffeehouse (damn, I can’t think of its name, and I spent a ton of time there. Enormous clock. Aromas, that was it), when there were perhaps a dozen people there, and by Best Reader and I were the only ones chiming in on the chorus. And banging on the table. If any Gentle Readers are in Wmsbg (and why not?), the Fraylox are back at the library next week. The CD I have is a recording of a performance at the library a few years ago, and they give good show.

The song is one of those traditional numbers, so although there’s only a little clip on-line from the recording I have, you can go to Tapuach b’Dvash’s version, very different instrumentally what with the enormous balalaika (what the hell is that, a subcontrabass?) and the drum, but recognizably the same song. Which, by the way, is a different song than the tailor one, also sometimes called “Ot Azoy”, or Ot Azoy Neyt A Shnayder or (as recorded by Cab Calloway) “Utt-Da-Zay”.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.