Dodi Li: A Song History
Dodi Li ("My Beloved Is Mine") is a modern Israeli song whose words are taken word for word from the biblical Song of Songs.[1] The National Library of Israel credits the music to Nira Chen and dates her setting to 1948.[1] That same year Rivka Sturman, an early choreographer of Israeli folk dance who lived at Kibbutz En-Harod in the Jezreel Valley, made a dance called Dodi Li, one of several of her dances that draw on Yemenite dance.[2]
The Bridegroom Offering a Crown to the Bride, from a Canticum Canticorum block book, second edition, woodcut printed in brown, Netherlands, ca. 1460–65. A fifteenth-century illustration of the Song of Songs, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.
By the 1950s Dodi Li was widely danced, and the singer Naomi Tzuri was among those who performed it.[1] Joshua Jacobson arranged Chen's tune for SATB choir in 1992, with a repeated horah rhythm, and World Music Press publishes the arrangement.[3] The same choral listing dates Chen's melody to about 1960 rather than 1948, so sources differ on when it was written.[3]
Judy House includes Dodi Li in A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer, a DAD-tuning book of Passover and Chanukah songs, Israeli folk songs, prayers, psalms and rounds, in both a solo chord-melody version and a three-part version.[4]
Sources
- National Library of Israel Blog: "An Eternal Love Song: 10 Classic Israeli Hits Inspired by the 'Song of Songs'".
- Jewish Women's Archive, Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women: "Rivka Sturman" (Dan Ronen).
- JewishChoralMusic: "Dodi Li".
- Judy House: "A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: The Bridegroom Offering a Crown to the Bride, from a Canticum Canticorum block book, second edition, woodcut printed in brown, Netherlands, ca. 1460–65. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.