Yiddish Songs and Music

It is my first, at least my first serious attempt to open a thread. The intention is to collect songs, music pieces, poems and plays in Yiddish. I think the art section is the right place. Feel free to contribute.

I start with:

I have found that tonight in the tube. It is a sample of a cabarat in Yiddish and English.

So sing me a yiddish song, I'll drink that melody ...



The other piece is a well known children song with deep sense and emotions.

Oip em weg staiht a boim ...
On the way stands a tree ...





And a very nice song about being unemployed and having nothing to eat in Jewish-German.

By Mordechaj Gebirtig, 1877-1942.
Ejns, tswej, draj, fir, Arbetlose senen mir,
One, two, three, four -, unemployed are we ...

Yiddish Language Radio (with songs and what not too)

http://yiddish.forward.com/last-radio-program/

If you don't know much about Yiddish check this out:

The History and Development of Yiddish

@Oswald: Do you get the Radio only to work with a Real Player?


An interesting, funny and a bit meshuggene production from Yehuda Glanz in Yiddish.
I excuse in advance to everyone here who is religious. I respect you. The song is about people who look for other to assamble a minyan. Even though the subject has a serious and not necessarily easy to conceive side, Glanz develops it with humor and irony. You may observe some similarities beside the social subject with the last song in the first post, the workers song.

guey shoin davenen?
Dude, have you already prayed?* or Let's go pray!



*Could someone check the translation, please?

I work for an organization which I believe has the largest collection of Yiddish and traditional Jewish music. They did a 12 year project to collect, catalogue and record hundreds of these songs.

Check it out: Milken Archive

Yeah --- I just used real player -- it played fine.

Milken Archive is incredible!!!

Kishen tuhas- all i know in Yiddish
I remember in my childhood my grandfather tried to tech me some basics but unfortunately i dont remember anything.

Oh vey! Im schwizn bullets just thinking about this thread.

@arfrisco: ikh farshteyn dayn shmerts, so far such a pain can be understood at all. Di lider zayen umet un freyd. For me they are part of a world of written words hinter di firhangen velkh bahaltn mayn treren.

If we try to go behind the sadness that lies over all these sung lines, there is still the vitality and the drive of the music, that can remind the listener that here something deeply human comes to light.

I am not sure if this counts. But here is the first part of the annual (17th year in a row) days of Jewish culture in Kraków.

It is uploaded on our public internet tv channel's side here

http://www.itvp.pl/rozrywka/video.ht...78&video=25637

Just click play.

Wo bish du gegangen, narrishe Beheme?
Where did you go, foolish animal?
- A parabole with deep sense -


The following is not yiddish but fits well in, the question: "What is a Chutzpeh?"


And a song with an optimistic outlook, to end the session.

Ejn bizel mazl, ejn bizel glik, dr Reidle soll sich schoin drehn
A bit of Mazl, a bit of luck, the wheel will turn ...

More music

Spil mir up a libes lidl!
Ikh hab gelast my heart in Budapesht.
Play a love song for me!
I let my heart in Budapest.

Interesting.
I knew already that Yiddish can trace it's origins to the German language but it is surprising how similar it is

They are very similar as most Germans could understand Yiddish.

The interview with Frank Krasnowski requires a bit of patience (1 hour). It is about a song, the yiddish language in general, Martin Buber, Yiddish vs Ivrit and other quarrels. I post the video here not so much because of the political melody that is played there and which appears at least to me a bit "constrained", but because it contains a descriptions of the yiddish culture and language, which reaches beyond a sentimental and folkloristic interest.

Here, we have a small hymnus with a yiddish line. You may recognize it.



And, a hymnus should not be sung without a lament in mind.

I do not know who wrote "Dortn iz mayn rue-platz" (There is my resting place). It is a mourning song, a form of the lament which is song at funerals. The voice is the bride adressing her bridegroom. The topic is traditional. Very beautiful.



Both songs contain verses in English and in Yiddish.

(Text: Dortn iz mayn rue-platz. Nit zukh mikh, vu di feygl zingen! Gefinst mikh dortn nit, ... Un hayter oyf mayn harts dos tribe, Un makh mir zis mayn rue-platz).

Saul Friedländer's lecture is not directely related to the topic but may make sense here now after the interview with Frank Krasnowski two post earlier. The lecture relates to Friedländer's investigation of diaries in holocaust studies. It is justified to post it here, I would think, because Yiddish became from the 18th century on more and more the language which could be identified with the Jewry of eastern and mideastern Europe. It was the Holocaust who brought the caesura, not Zionism (as the interview may imply).