Sunday, April 6, 2014
11am
Yivo Institute for Jewish Reasearch
5 W 16th St
New York, NY 10011

SYMPOSIUM
Chair: Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University

Admission: General – $10 | YIVO members, seniors and students – $7
Box Office: smarttix.com | 212.868.4444

Around 1900, East European Jews became acutely aware of the impact of modernization and urbanization on their culture: on their songs, their tales, and customs. They set in motion a wide range of projects and institutions to gather, archive, and study fading folklore. YIVO was a pioneer in this push, along with a galaxy of Polish and Russian (later Soviet) activists. Today, with the loss of the original population and the huge demographic and cultural shifts of world Jewry, the surviving archives both preserve and channel a rising tide of interest, even a hunger, for what’s called “Yiddish” music and folklore.

This symposium brings together archivists, scholars and performers to discuss the history and creation of Yiddish folk music archives, and the future of the study and performance of Yiddish song today. What is the role of Jewish music archives in fostering new scholarship and Yiddish music?

The event is dedicated to the memory of Chana Mlotek, YIVO’s Music Archivist from 1978 until her recent passing at age 91 in 2013.

This program is made possible with the generous support of the Mlotek family. It is co-sponsored by the American Society for Jewish Music.

Mark Slobin is the Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music at Wesleyan University and the author or editor of many books, on Afghanistan and Central Asia, eastern European Jewish music, and ethnomusicology theory, two of which have received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award: Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World (Oxford University Press) and Tenement Songs: Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants (University of Illinois Press). He has been President of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Society for Asian Music.