🕵️old klezmers🎻I decided on a whim to buy a 6-pak for Yiddish New York and to focus on concerts and lectures. It's happening over Dec 20-25 and many of them can be streamed online. There's honestly too much to pick from and I'll have to miss some interesting ones by friends of mine. check it out at
https://www.yiddishnewyork.com/
this is my friend Aaron's lecture and part of the inspiration for me to sign up lol. last year he did one about all the derivative LP covers of Fiddler on the Roof knockoffs and international productions which was excellent, so I have a lot of faith that this one will be funny.
this is another one I couldn't miss, my friend Eve's lecture on Shirley Baron, a NYC drummer from WWII through the late 80s who I found ads for in my YIVO research this spring and we both became quite interested in. there's a whole oral history with her about being in a 1930s orphanage and becoming a restaurant musician during WWII etc. it says in-person on this poster but hybrid on the schedule so hopefully i'm good.
I felt like this one was a good fit for my research to think productively through the connection between historical people and the music they passed down to us. by Isabel Frey, the great Vienna-based #Yiddish protest singer.
The description of the above is worth quoting because it's super interesting:
"Despite the extensive archives of Yiddish folksongs collected in early 20th-century Eastern Europe, little was recorded about the singers themselves, leaving a gap in our understanding of the social contexts of singing and the role of the folksinger in the Old Country." ...
... "The YIVO Folksong Project of the 1970s, led by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, sought to address this gap, recording over 2,000 songs and 320 hours of oral history from immigrant singers in North America—materials only recently digitized and made accessible. This talk highlights the biographies of three such singers interviewed in depth—Lifshe Schaechter-Widman, Solomon (Harry) Ary, and Khinke (Ann) Asher" ...
... "tracing how folksong shaped Jewish life in Eastern Europe and how its meanings shifted through migration and memory. It also reflects on how the very act of interviewing contributed to the construction of the figure of the “Yiddish folksinger,” a powerful image that continues to shape how we understand Yiddish folksong today."
#FolkMusic #OnlineLecture #ethnomusicology #Yiddish #FolkSongs
another lecture i got a ticket for is about the miraculous collection of Yiddish radio music scores hoarded by someone who believed they were important and finally donated to the NYPL after he died. not at all klezmer; they were Americanized & artful Yiddish music for the modern set.
here's an article about that trove of music - quite interesting IMO!
https://www.jta.org/2024/11/11/ny/how-the-ny-public-library-acquired-a-treasure-trove-of-jewish-and-yiddish-music
https://www.jta.org/2024/11/11/ny/how-the-ny-public-library-acquired-a-treasure-trove-of-jewish-and-yiddish-music
finally I bought a ticket for the lunchtime concert of Seattle-based Yiddish duo Brivele, whose lecture about antifascist Yiddish music I'll be sad to miss, and for the annual Dreaming in Yiddish concert which this year is honouring and featuring our dear friend Michael "Meyshke" Alpert😍
I've said before that Michael is one of my faves in the Yiddish music world, very kind guy who is generous with his time and knowledge. well deserved.
https://jewishpostandnews.ca/uncategorized/musician-ethnographer-michael-alpert-to-receive-dreaming-in-yiddish-award/
https://jewishpostandnews.ca/uncategorized/musician-ethnographer-michael-alpert-to-receive-dreaming-in-yiddish-award/
Musician-ethnographer Michael Alpert to receive Dreaming in Yiddish Award
Michael Alpert, an influential klezmer musician and ethnographer who has played a key role in the global renaissance of Yiddish music and culture, has been selected as this year’s recipient of the prestigious Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award. The ceremony will take place at the Dreaming in Yiddish Award Concert during the Yiddish New […]
as for the rest, I don't really like taking online group music or singing lessons, so I'm OK with missing those, but I'm sad to miss quite a lot of other great lectures and concerts about queer Yiddishkeit, archives, interesting moments in history, and other eclectic topics.