Maccabeats, behind you! Watch Spanish senior citizens funk it up in a new Passover video clip
Published April 27, 2016
(JTA) — Ahead of every major Jewish holiday, artists all around the world cannibalize pop chart hits to produce holiday music videos they hope will break the Jewish internet.
Some of these clips, which are designed to be shared on social networks, are on offer on aish.com, the website of the Aish HaTorah Jewish education network. Last week it featured a boy band performing “Passover Funk” – a spoof filmed in a West Bank settlement of Mark Ronson’s 2014 hit titled “Uptown Funk.”
The Maccabeats, a well-known New York Jewish vocal group, gave Aish stiff competition with their Justin Bieber Passover Mashup — a medley of three holiday songs based on tunes by the 22-year-old Canadian heartthrob.
But Passover internet hits are no longer a young person’s game. This year, a group of singers over 60 from the Jewish community of Cordoba in southern Spain released their own Passover video clip, based on a pop number a little more to their liking — an Argentine rock ‘n’ roll song from 1964.
Titled “The Passover Palito,” it is an homage to the Argentine Elvis admirer Palito Ortega and is based on his hit “Despeinada,” meaning “uncombed.” It deals with an otherwise attractive woman with very unruly hair.
The Jewish version, produced by the Halevay choir of elderly singers from the Masorti wing of Cordoba’s small Jewish community, assures listeners their “pretty little face and great figure” will become “a colossal disaster” if they come to “Granny Rosa’s seder” because they will not be able to control their eating when they taste her delicacies.
Designed with 1960s animation, the video was produced for Halevay’s 20th anniversary. It also features the band’s singers sporting 1970s afro wigs and flower power bandanas.
It has been viewed 8,000 times on YouTube, a figure that is significantly lower than the 116,000 who viewed the Maccabeats’ latest release (or the million views of their 2015 release, “Dayenu,” which features several music styles from yodeling to death metal). But is more than 10 times the number of Jews living in Cordoba today.
