Nefesh Mountain has a new video, a live performance of the song Bound For The Promised Land from their just released album, Beneath The Open Sky.
The band is an effort between the New Jersey husband-and-wife team of Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg, designed to incorporate the rich cultural and musical inheritance of their Jewish faith with the Appalachian old time and bluegrass sound they have come to love. Their recordings and live performances are drawn for their adaptations of the liturgical music of the Jewish rituals, plus new songs that they write for the group.
They are extremely popular on the synagogue circuit, entertaining congregations with new versions of songs they have known from childhood, with the toe-tapping sound of the banjo and fiddle to move them along.
Eric exp[lains how he came to appreciate Appalachian string music.
“I grew up in Brooklyn, but my dad’s side of the family, which was not Jewish—he converted when he married my mother—lived in rural Georgia. I would go down and hang out with my uncles, who were great guitar players. We’d hike the Appalachian Trail and listen to old-time music. Something in my soul always responded to this deep, ancient, and undeniable feeling that I had from being down South in this heartland of America.”
This latest video is one that Doni and Eric wrote about the aspirations we all have to achieve peace and happiness in our lives, something that crosses all human boundaries of ethnicity or creed.
Zasloff says that the song describes what they are trying to do with their music.
“We want to have a chance to share our story with everybody. There is this word ‘Americana’ that we all know well and is used a lot these days, bridging the gaps somewhere between old-time, bluegrass, folk, blues and jazz which all have deep roots in this country. For me, the beauty of all of these forms of music is that at their core they are about people, they are about this amazing world, and they are about life. That is where we are coming from with Nefesh Mountain; somewhere in the long chain of music and ideology that gives us the opportunity to open people’s minds and hearts to our culture and heritage. We’re all in the same boat here. We’re all trying to figure it out.”
Bound For The Promised Land is available now wherever quality music is sold.
