non-Jewish music conversions

There is no word if Lavy Palkovitch paid royalties to Amii Stewart for using her music in one of his new songs, Achake Lo, but his fans are upset to have discovered that he converted her song, Working Late Tonight, from 1983, and turned it into Jewish music.

For some reason they are upset about this and say it is inappropriate for a hassidic singer to use such a song as a basis for his own song.

The response from his "publicist" friend, Lipa Shmelzer, said from other hassideic rebbes and the Baal Shem Tov that it is a mitzva to take non-Jewish music and make it holy.
source: Kikar

I am not sure why they care so much this time, considering how so many Jewish songs have their sources in non-Jewish music. Maybe it is just because it was somehow discovered so quickly, rather than only a long time later. It seems to be so easy to discover these things now, with Youtube and the Internet making music so accessible and discoverable.

It is clearly much easier, and rightfully so, to convert non-Jewish songs to Judaism than it is to convert non-Jews to Judaism...

Here is Amii Stewart's original song (obviously Kol Isha alert for those who need it):



and once on the topic, I have to also play my all time favorite converted song - the original by Ghenghis Khan, reworked by Mordechai Ben David..

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