- Polina Markovna Shepherd, Yiddish performer, composer, and choir leader, describes feeling different and marginalized and discusses the development of her Jewish identity at the age of 16, including her introduction to the klezmer music scene in...
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project Excerpts
- Lorin Sklamberg, lead singer for The Klezmatics and YIVO sound archivist, explains how his earliest exposure to Jewish music was through Israeli folk songs as he goes on to describe the beginning of his interest in klezmer.
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project Excerpts
- Sarah Bunin Benor - professor of Jewish studies and linguistics - describes the evolution of her interest in Yiddish beginning with her teenage interest in klezmer and continuing at Columbia University and the Yiddish Book Center.
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project Excerpts
- Frank London - founding member of the Klezmatics and Frank London's All-Star Klezmer Brass Ensemble - discusses Yiddish as a "post-vernacular" living language, based on Jeffrey Shandler's writings.
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project Excerpts
- Elizabeth Schwartz, singer, introduces and performs The Plum Tree, a traditional klezmer melody she composed English lyrics for in honor of historian Itzik Schwartz and his wife Tzila.
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project Excerpts
- Israel Bartal - Professor of Jewish History at Hebrew University - shares the story of getting a letter from a klezmer musician from Galicia who spoke his parents' dialect.
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project Excerpts
- Frank London - founding member of the Klezmatics and Frank London's All-Star Klezmer Brass Ensemble - explains why he decided to write a Yiddish opera and argues that opera is well suited for Yiddish.
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project Excerpts
- Christian Dawid - Berlin-based, world-renowned klezmer clarinet player - explains that he likes Yiddish for its "roughness" and the ways in which it can be both beautiful and obscene.
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project Excerpts
- Frank London - founding member of the Klezmatics and Frank London's All-Star Klezmer Brass Ensemble - describes collaborating with Michael Wex, author of Born to Kvetch in order to write the first Yiddish song about marijuana.
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project Excerpts
- Hankus Netsky tells us about his recent book Klezmer: Music and Community in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia, a portrait of the folk music and traditions of the city’s Jewish community.
Part of The Shmooze Podcast Series
