The Discovery Project - Collecting Bessarabian Klezmer and More

For those of you who think of Jewish Eastern Europe as a place in the distant past, think again. While the Jewish religion was virtually stamped out in the mid-twentieth century Soviet Union, some Jewish cultural traditions actually continued to thrive there, even aspects that languished in other Jewish communities around the world. The various late-twentieth century waves of Jewish immigration to North America brought us klezmers who may as well have stepped out of nineteenth-century history books.

Listen to Lemonchiki (Little Lemons). Listen to Berditchever Sher.

Some aren't even much older than me. Edward Kagansky was born in a small village near Kishinev, Moldova (formerly known as Bessarabia) in 1952. As a child, Kagansky longed to play the piano, but his father couldn't afford one. Instead, he came home one day with a small suitcase containing a beautiful miniature accordion. Soon Edward was playing with local Roma musicians. By the time he reached his early twenties he was learning the klezmer (Jewish party) repertoire while traversing the Moldavian countryside with an octogenarian badkhn (folk poet and wedding entertainer) who went by the name of "Nakhes" (fulfillment).

In 1990, Kagansky left Kishenev, moving his family first to Cuba, and then three years later to Burlington, Ontario, but he never forgot his klezmer roots. For one week at the end of August, Edward Kagansky will be among the teaching fellows at Canada's own klezmer stronghold, KlezKanada, the week-long Yiddish music, language, and culture workshop held every year since 1996 at Camp B'nai Brith, in the Laurentian Mountains, an hour north of Montreal. And as the Book Center's Discovery Project enters its second season we will be heading north to launch our first major educational collaboration.

KlezKanada is a natural partner for our cultural recovery endeavor. A mecca for musician-activists and Jewish culture enthusiasts, both young and old (many of whom hail from Canada's heavily Jewish urban centers), it has been a cornerstone of the North American and international klezmer revival, spawning musical groups that have changed the face of the Yiddish music scene in the past decade. It has also been the site for some of the most extraordinary documentation of our once-again vibrant Eastern European Jewish culture, culled from residencies with such luminaries as actor/folksinger Theo Bikel, pianist/composer Irving Fields, the Epstein Brothers Orchestra, the Philadelphia Klezmer Heritage Ensemble (with Joe Borock, Marvin Katz, and Elaine Watts), clarinetist Danny Rubenstein, Konsonans Retro (a virtuosic klezmer group from Ukraine), and Yiddish Theatre stars including David Rogoff, Bruce Adler, and Mina Bern.

As part of our collaboration, KlezKanada has agreed to make footage of these residencies available to us to post on our website -- and to make the Discovery Project an integral part of the KlezKanada curriculum. Not only will I be presenting workshops on the material we've been gathering and showcasing at the Book Center, but I will also train a specially selected group of students to gather material for our project, both on-site and in their own communities. These cultural treasures will be disseminated via our website, our publications, through exhibits in our Discovery Gallery and as part of the Yiddish Book Center's groundbreaking educational curriculum. So get ready as we bring Bessarabia and other Jewish cultural heartlands back to Amherst -- and to your home computer screens!

But why wait 'til the end of the summer? Click here to hear some spirited Odessa klezmer, featuring Edward Kagansky on accordion, along with legendary clarinetist German Goldensteyn and Michael Alpert or Hankus Netsky on poyk (traditional Eastern European marching drum).

(And for more information on KlezKanada (2009 dates: August 24-30), visit its website at www.klezkanada.com)

- by Hankus Netsky