Album Notes

Jewish FunkeyMonkeys! is the 3rd album from the FunkeyMonkeys; the NYC-based funk supergroup for children and families. Created and produced by Dora the Explorer composer, Josh Sitron.

The original inspiration for Jewish FunkeyMonkeys came in 2000, before the live band even existed. While recording music for Dora the Explorer with Boots the Monkey (the then 8-year old, Harrison Chad), the two started spontaneously jamming on a funny and funky version of 'Ma Nish Tanah: the Passover Four Questions song' in the recording booth (while waiting in between takes of Dora dialogue: 'bridge, gate, big red hill'.) Ah, show business.

After leaving Nickelodeon, Josh created the 1st FunkeyMonkeys album, in which a chorus of children funk their way through children's classics remade in house, disco, funk, hip hop, techno, reggae, and jazzy styles. The album was a hit, so Josh decided to do a Jewish one. Enlisting a dozen superstar kids from the Ramaz school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, along with the incomparable Carey White on lead vocals, Jewish FunkeyMonkeys was recorded in the fall of 2002.

Two years, 22 songs, and a cast of thousands later, the new CD is finished.

The song selection is very eclectic and from all over the Jewish cultural map. There are Holiday songs, secular songs, reform, orthodox, hasidic, english, hebrew, yiddish, instrumental, religious, non-religious, Israeli, Debbie Friedman, and of course, Fiddler on the Roof songs.

Done in the spirit of inclusion, Jewish FunkeyMonkeys is for everyone. You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy it thoroughly.