Local News

Brandon Walker’s Newest Fun Video

Jewish songster returns with a Passover parody video.

You loved him in his popular breakthrough video, “Chinese Food On Christmas.” Now, local singer/satirist Brandon Walker is back with his follow-up effort, the Passover-themed “Get Down With Moses.”

The theme of the song and its video are simple enough. “It’s a bad- a-- Moses who goes around town and parts stuff,” Mr. Walker said.  The organization birthright israel commissioned the video, which can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/brandonharriswalker.

Arrayed in robes, a rapping Moses and his posse cruise around, parting things. Moses can part everything from your hair to automatic doors. He can eat matzoh pizza, deliver babies and get arrested for possessing bitter herbs. It’s a heck of a 3 minutes and 57 seconds.

An instrumental music director at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community Day School, Mr. Walker, 25, graduated from Owings Mills High School and attended James Madison University, where he majored in history. He scored an underground hit with his song about seeking out Chinese food on Christmas –– a celebrated Jewish tradition — while the gentile world huddles around the Tannenbaum.

Since then, the dating site http://www.JDate.com has commissioned him to write songs and perform at its events. Mr. Walker even penned a Valentine’s Day ditty for the site.

“Get Down With Moses” is not his first foray into the hip-hop realm. Mr. Walker first discovered the sound while writing his history thesis about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At about the same time, his music professor asked students to write rap songs. Mr. Walker came up with “Point Of No Return,” a hip-hop examination of the Middle East conflict.

“Rap is fun because you are not bound by the phrasing and the rhyme scheme as much as you are with melodic music,” Mr. Walker said. “With rap, you can squeeze a lot of stuff in there, and it sounds cool. Plus, you can say a lot more with rap.”

And if all goes really well, you can give your mom, Laurie Walker, a cameo as the lady who serves up matzoh pizza in the video.

Baltimore plays a part in the clip, too, as Mr. Walker and his dancers cut loose before the Charm City skyline. “I called the [Maryland] Science Center to see if I could use their property for filming and they were just like, ‘Why don’t you go up on the roof? It’s a great view.’ They were so nice.”

Mr. Walker said he’d eventually like to go beyond the Jewish parody niche. He is posting a new song every month at his Web site, http://www.Brandon walkermusic.com. Meanwhile, he said he is just pleased to have gotten birthright israel to commission his first paying gig.

“My goal is make writing music a full-time job,” he said. “It’s all baby steps for now.”

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