The Workers’ Circle (Der Arbeter Ring) has started enrolling participants in its online spring course of klezmer music and Yiddish songs. Starting from February 27, the Zoom classes will be held for 10 weeks. Participants will have the opportunity to choose between several workshops during the course. The main working language will be English.
Moisei Beregovsky
Jewish Folk Songs
Jewish Instrumental Folk Music
Jewish Folk Tunes Without Words
Jewish Musical Folklore (v. 1, Yiddish)
Jewish Musical Folklore (v. 1, Russian)
Among the many modern writers and performers of Yiddish songs, there are people of a wide variety of views, artistic preferences and backgrounds. Yiddish attracts not only musicians of Jewish ancestry, but also ethnic Germans, Russians, African Americans, Chinese performers, etc.
Here is one outstanding example.
Psoy Korolenko (real name Pavel Lion) is a performer from Jewish background born in 1967 in Moscow. Having a PhD in philology, he is a musician, songwriter and a polyglot who sings in Russian, Yiddish, English and French, often mixing these languages together, experimenting with different song traditions. From the playful use of Yiddish as a “glue” for connecting the heterogeneous elements of his work, Korolenko gradually moved on to performing songs from the archives of Moisei Beregovsky and other collectors of Jewish folklore. Korolenko often uses previously forgotten texts discovered in Kiev by the Canadian researcher Anna Shternshis.
See below some other examples of the extremely diverse modern musical creativity in Yiddish.