Blog

Essays, interviews, listicles, podcasts, and much more, covering all aspects of Yiddish culture.

Blog

Songs to Make It Better: A Review of the Third and Fourth Unternationals by Daniel Kahn and Psoy Korolenko

Uri Schreter reviews two new albums from Daniel Kahn and Psoy Korolenko.

Blog

Shtetl Berlin: Online Edition

What hap­pens when you move a klezmer fes­ti­val online? Eka­te­ri­na Kuznetso­va reviews Yid­dish cul­ture in the era of COVID-19 at Shtetl Berlin 2020.

Interview

Millennial Bundism: An Interview with Isabel Frey

Faith Hillis inter­views Vien­na-based musi­cian and activist Isabel Frey about her lat­est album, Mil­len­ni­al Bundist; the place of Yid­dish music in con­tem­po­rary left-wing pol­i­tics; and Frey’s cre­ative rewrit­ings of rev­o­lu­tion­ary anthems.

Interview

Inside the Yiddish Folk Song: An Interview with Mark Slobin

Ari Kel­man talks with Mark Slobin about Inside the Yid­dish Folk Song, a new web­site project cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion, which aims to be an acces­si­ble, com­pre­hen­sive online intro­duc­tion to the full com­plex­i­ty of the Yid­dish folk song tradition.

Blog

On Not Understanding: Performing Yiddish Song Today

As a com­pos­er and per­former of Yid­dish music, Rosen con­fronts the fact that most mem­bers of my audi­ence do not under­stand the lan­guage of the texts he per­forms. Yet, while music does not com­mu­ni­cate infor­ma­tion in the same way as lan­guage, it can lead lis­ten­ers towards spe­cif­ic asso­ci­a­tions and mean­ings. There are mul­ti­ple instances in which trans­la­tion, imag­ined or guid­ed, takes place dur­ing a musi­cal per­for­mance and the com­pos­er and per­former medi­ates these processes.

Interview

Between Translation and Tradaptation: An Interview with Daniel Kahn, Berlin, January 2017

Maranne Windsperg­er inter­views punk­folk artist Daniel Kahn about his approach­es to transadap­ta­tion and translation.

Interview

Memorializing the Holocaust in Electronic Music: An Interview with Francisco Dean

Jo Sabath talks with Fran­cis­co Dean about Dean’s Frilingdik Umbazigt: As the Spring Uncon­quered, an elec­tron­ic music piece memo­ri­al­iz­ing the Holo­caust that he com­posed and direct­ed with high school stu­dent musi­cians at the Chica­go Lab­o­ra­to­ry School.

Blog

Northern Voices: New Yiddish Song in Sweden

Eisen­berg reviews Shtoltse Lid­er, a mul­ti­me­dia stage show, with songs in Yid­dish and Eng­lish, and expla­na­tions and evo­ca­tions in Swedish, from Swedish duo Ida and Louise. 

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