Yiddish Song Roundtable at Yiddish New York 2017
Through a rich and diverse repertoire of lullabies, ballads, love songs, maskillic songs, and paraliturgical songs, Yiddish folksong is, along with the culinary arts, a tradition that probably every Yiddish-speaking family has participated in. Despite this historic pervasiveness, Yiddish folksong remains one of the least studied and poorly understood arts of East European Jewry.
On December 28th, 2017, Yiddish New York was excited to host a pioneering roundtable discussion on the Yiddish folksong tradition, with leading academics and performers gathering to discuss the current state of scholarship and to lay the groundwork for future research and convenings.
The roundtable was moderated by acclaimed ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin (Wesleyan). Speaker presentations are provided below:
Jeff Warschauer:
Janet Leuchter:
Walter Zev Feldman:
Itzik Gottesman:
Amanda Seigel:
Sasha Lurje:
Larisa Pechersky:
Abigail Wood:
Josh Waletzky, followed by a general discussion at around the 13:22 mark in the video:
And here’s the last of the concluding discussion:
Yiddish Song of the Week 