TikTok’s latest music craze has nothing to do with pop stars or the world’s top 40 hits. Instead, the surfers are obsessed with an ultra-orthodox song from 2007 by the Miami Flower Choir that is known in almost every ultra-Orthodox home, but the ones who surprised were the non-Jewish surfers who sing and dance ultra-Orthodox pop in Hebrew without understanding the meaning of the words.
The Miami Children’s Choir was founded in 1977 by Yerachmiel Bigon in Miami Beach, Florida. It later moved to New York City, but kept its original name. Bigon’s son, Hanania Bigon, set up the Miami Boys Choir account on TikTok a little over six months ago. “I told him: ‘Dad, we have to get on Tiktok. There is a chance, no one knows for sure, but there is a chance that something crazy could happen,’ and he agreed, he gave me hundreds of clips to publish,” Hanania told the American media in grief.
Nachum Siegel’s full YouTube interview with Yerchamiel Bigun.
Since then, the legendary composer Yerahmiel Bigon said, he has received close to fifty requests for interviews from various media organizations. Bigon says that he politely refused them, according to him he is not used to the type of interviews of two or three questions, “and let’s take it to the media”, according to him, in order to convey the message of the songs, what is behind it, an interview of at least an hour is needed.
Yerahmiel Bigon was interviewed by media personality Nahum Segal in the United States, a very popular radio broadcaster, known among the ultra-Orthodox Jews in the United States. The two talked for an hour about 40 years of music. Bigon said that the reason he refused to be interviewed by the general media was a personal matter: “I wanted all 40 years of music to be with me in an interview, the general media cannot convey the message, explain things, the way I want, with you now in an interview, I can To convey the messages I want, because the music is with us, you know me, you’ve been going with me for decades, I’ve been interviewed by you several times, so I feel that with you I can convey the message properly.”
Bigon says that the whole Tiktok trend started some time ago, his son Hanania came and asked for materials from the band that holds concerts around the world, “I gave it to him” he says, “I told him, you want to take it, do what you understand, I tried to understand what Tiktok is, What is viral, I didn’t know this whole concept of social networks, even today I don’t know, I don’t know how these things are manipulated, I know that uploading a video people come in and see, my son took clips and started uploading, he added all kinds of sentences, he There was a hashtag, and then I saw 5000 views, then 10,000, then 50,000, 100,000, I didn’t understand what virality was, I thought to myself, what does it matter how people see? I know the previous era, I do a show, people come and watch, After that, you sit at home and watch a videotape, then a disc, today on a computer with YouTube.”
He also said: “I didn’t know the concept of social networks, and I asked myself why a person would share this, what does it mean to share, transfer it from one place to another? But then a song from Jerusalem came, it was something crazy, really something unusual, it reached hundreds of millions Views all over the world.”
And then Yerahmiel recounts in dismay, he began to understand a little more about this whole concept, but as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, he politely refused to be interviewed by the general media: he is by the interviewer Nachum Siegel, does today when he composes songs, does he take into account that not only Jews watch it , but also non-Jews, and then maybe the type of music should be changed a bit. “There is a bit of thought, yes, I won’t say no,” Bigon says, “but the goal is to stay with the spirituality that I have been leading for decades.” He says that he saw that the song went around the world and was quite amazed: “I saw people adding a translation to the words, explaining the words from Hebrew to English, and there is something special in that it is actually a song about Jerusalem, that the whole world actually knows Jerusalem, and talks about it, it helped bring hearts together, People suddenly became interested in Judaism, in the Jews, and they see the beautiful side of the Jews, there is no doubt that the song Jerusalem is really something special.”
Bigon says that he is in contact with some of the choir’s graduates, and he is very happy to see those who continue the Jewish spiritual heritage in terms of singing or composing, and do not squint into other realms in terms of types of music. When he sees them continue the way he taught them it makes him happy.
Yerahmiel Bigon at the Haske 2023 show | Photography: Haim Toito.
More than that, he says: “I started receiving responses from people in hysterical amounts, many of the responses were like “You brought us back to spiritual life,” or “You brought us back to Judaism,” and “Thanks to you, we’re suddenly hearing Hasidic music” or “Where have you been all these years.” Grief Says that he is happy that he can strengthen people through music.”
At the end, Rahmiel Bigon revealed that a new album will be released soon that will include between 10-12 new songs, and he thinks they are hits: “They are very, very, very good” he says. And he hopes that he will get to continue making good music for many years to come.