KesheNavo
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Hebrew: כשנבוא (When We Come). Circle dance by Avi Perez, 1986.
The song is originally Greek. It's title is "Τι θέλεις, γέρο;" ("What do You Want, Old Man?") and it was composed by Argyris Kounadis with lyrics by Giorgos Kalamariotis. The song was written at the end of the Regime of the Colonels, the junta that overthrew the Greek government in 1967 and ruled as an authoritarian dictatorship until 1974. The title means "What Do You Want, Old Man" and is addressed to one of the fallen leaders, who has by then lost all his power. (Greek songwriters played a large part in the resistance against the Regime, including especially Mikis Theodorakis, who wrote the music for the protest film Z and also wrote the song whose Hebrew version is El Elohey Shamayim.)
The Hebrew version was performed by Arik Einstein, working with Miki Gavrielov (Hebrew lyrics by Eli Mohar). Einstein is widely recognized as the first to popularize Greek music in Israel, starting with the song we call Irisim. Although the dance is called "KesheNavo", the Hebrew song was titled "SheKesheNavo". This is why: In the Hebrew version, the second line of the refrain starts with "shekeshenavo", and at exactly the same point the original lyric is "σε ξένο κό", that is, "se kséno kó", which sounds a lot like "shekeshenavo" as you can hear in the Greek recording below. The song appeared on Einstein's 24th album, "Ohev Lihyot BaBayit", which was the first CD produced and sold in Israel.
The recording we typically use (unless cut otherwise) has a bouzouki solo in place of the repetition of the refrain after the second verse. The player is Yehuda Poliker. Listen carefully and you'll hear Arik Einstein call out "Yasu, Yuda!" followed by "Einayim Sheli", the name of Poliker's first album, which had just been released.
Links
Lyrics, translation, transliteration, and musical transcription of the Hebrew version
Lyrics and transliteration of the original Greek song
Ofer Gavish's blog post (Hebrew) on this song, which tells more of the story and is the source of much of this article
The original performance by Antonis Kalogiannis
The first performance by Arik Einstein, including ad lib passages that are cut on our recordings and are explained in the blog post above
KesheNavo at israelidances.com
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