One of the recent insights I’ve gained in my attempt to understand why certain songs have more impact than others is that linking oneself with a great tradition of the past, actively drawing from centuries of people’s spiritual and creative exploration, is a powerful and organic connection that seems to resonate deeply with a wider audience and to carry more significance than one’s personal story.

Avishai Cohen is a bass player, composer, band leader and one of the most established and well-known Israeli Jazz musicians of recent years. His music is a beautiful example of the personal expression available through the medium of Jazz, and his albums are full of original, highly rhythmic music with virtuoso instrumental solos and beautiful melodies. In his album Continuo the song that stood out most to me is the song “Ani Ma’amin” (I believe), which upon further investigation turned out to be a rendition of an old Jewish song. It is very much in the Jazz tradition for musicians to use songs by popular composers and arrange them for their working group, and “Ani Ma’amin” is very aptly arranged and played by Avishai Cohen’s trio with Sam Barsh on piano and Mark Guiliana on drums.

Instrumental music has a subtle advantage over vocal music - one need not understand any one language in order to listen and take in the notes and melodies, while listening to someone singing in a foreign language might not permit an easy and accessible listening experience. After hearing the above instrumental track, try to compare it to the vocal rendition below, recorded several decades earlier by Arik Lavie, one of Israel’s great singers of the early generation, and see if you can sense the connection and relationship between the two.

This transcription is valuable to me because it’s simple, rhythmic and harmonically rich, and I think that if you compare it to the original song you can learn a great deal about arranging, freedom of phrasing and harmonic coloring. Lastly, consider the original poem that inspired the music: “Go on, laugh at my dreams // The dreams I'm sharing with you // Laugh, because I still believe // Believe in people and in you”.