Tracing the Yiddish Folksinger: Ethnographic-Biographical Insights from the YIVO Yiddish Folksong Project

• In Event: New Directions in Ethnography and Sociology

Abstract

Despite the extensive archives of written and recorded sources of "Yiddish folksongs" collected in the early 20th century in Eastern Europe, there is a notable scarcity of information about the singers themselves. This paper traces the figure of the Yiddish folksinger through ethnographic-biographical analyses of individual immigrant Yiddish singers interviewed during the YIVO Yiddish Folksong Project, led by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in the early 1970s in North America. The 320 hours of interview recordings were only recently digitized and published in the YIVO archive's online catalog, making them publicly accessible for the first time.

Author

• Isabel Frey, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna