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.
no subject
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?