און מיר זינגען זיך אַ ליד פֿון אַ לאַנד, אַ וועלט, אַ נײַע
So a couple of weeks ago ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gaudior invited me to a Yiddish sing being held this afternoon at the Somerville Community Growing Center and it turned out to be run by the Boston Workmen's Circle and I knew about half the songs in their packet and had a wonderful time even with the ones I didn't and the upshot is that I kind of accidentally auditioned into their community chorus. Which was not how I was expecting this afternoon to go, but I will very definitely take it. I felt I had a somewhat fragmentary answer when asked where I learned my Yiddish songs: my mother sang some as lullabies to me even though she did not herself know Yiddish and we had Theodore Bikel's records in the house when I was growing up and then I got to college and discovered the Klezmatics and last year skygiants threw Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird at me and in the meantime I found and listened to a lot of different things on my own time and occasionally performed them professionally. I got Partisans of Vilna (1988) from selkie. It's a folk tradition. I interact with those. I have pointed out to Tiny Wittgenstein that they often come in fragments.
Afterward I had very nice dinner and conversation with Gaudior and walked home by way of Gracie's and a cone of cardamom and honey cornbread ice cream. I just got back to the internet.
Look at this kraken.
gaudior invited me to a Yiddish sing being held this afternoon at the Somerville Community Growing Center and it turned out to be run by the Boston Workmen's Circle and I knew about half the songs in their packet and had a wonderful time even with the ones I didn't and the upshot is that I kind of accidentally auditioned into their community chorus. Which was not how I was expecting this afternoon to go, but I will very definitely take it. I felt I had a somewhat fragmentary answer when asked where I learned my Yiddish songs: my mother sang some as lullabies to me even though she did not herself know Yiddish and we had Theodore Bikel's records in the house when I was growing up and then I got to college and discovered the Klezmatics and last year skygiants threw Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird at me and in the meantime I found and listened to a lot of different things on my own time and occasionally performed them professionally. I got Partisans of Vilna (1988) from selkie. It's a folk tradition. I interact with those. I have pointed out to Tiny Wittgenstein that they often come in fragments.Afterward I had very nice dinner and conversation with Gaudior and walked home by way of Gracie's and a cone of cardamom and honey cornbread ice cream. I just got back to the internet.
Look at this kraken.
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You should! The next Yiddish sing is the evening of September 27th at the Boston Workmen's Circle Center. The couple who run them were very clear that knowledge of either Yiddish songs or Yiddish is not required.
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That reminds me that I've been starting to learn this wonderful, macaronic English/Yiddish/Hebrew song that I feel you would appreciate. I've only heard it sung by one living person -- the late, talented Jerry Epstein. I had relegated it to the category of, "Damn, that was hilarious, I should have learned it while Jerry was alive." Welp, turns out that it's also on an album on Spotify, just when I never thought I would hear it again.
It's called, "Say, O'Brien" and the only problem with performing it is that the number of people who I know who (a) will hold still to listen to me sing, (b) understand Yiddish and Hebrew, and (c) would find the jokes funny, is probably in the single digits. If I ever perform it, I'm going to have to travel with subtitle cards that I hold up when I sing the Yiddish/Hebrew lines. I still might. It's just that good.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: sometime, would you mind checking my pronunciation on the Yiddish lines?