Ruth Rubin tribute, San Francisco, CA, 9 May, 2013
SPECIAL PRESENTATION OF YIDDISH SONGS FROM NEWLY CULLED ARCHIVAL RECORDINGS
Ruth Rubin’s Reel-to-Reel Mashinke
A Presentation by Jeanette Lewicki
Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 7:00 PM
Jewish Community Library,
1835 Ellis St.,
San Francisco, CA
Free
Toting her state-of-the-art portable tape “mashinke,” Ruth Rubin recorded native Yiddish singers in libraries, old folks’ homes, summer camps, kitchens, and Carnegie Hall. When she died in 2000, Rubin left hundreds of reel-to-reel tapes that include thousands of folk songs about gangsters, workers, lovers, children, rabbis and street vendors.
Bay Area Yiddish singer and accordionist Jeanette Lewicki spent last July at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York on a trip sponsored by the An-sky Institute for Jewish Culture. Her labor of love: transferring the Ruth Rubin archive from tape to computer.
"These are the old songs, in the old style: usually unaccompanied, subtle, funny and kitsch-free,” Lewicki says. During her Jewish Community Library presentation, she will sing and translate her favorite selections from the Rubin tapes, with an emphasis on underworld songs.
Lewicki performs with numerous klezmer groups and has led Yiddish song workshops in many venues. She performed on Ardady Gendler's CD Mayn Shtetele Soroke (and co-produced it with Donald Brody and Ellie Shapiro of the Jewish Music Festival), Fli Mayn Flishlang (for which she arranged children’s songs by Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman), Harbst (with the Klez-X), and the gonifs break out, a new release on Porto Franco Records.
The Jewish Community Library provides free garage parking and is wheelchair-accessible. For more information, call (415) 567-3327, ext 703.
Sponsored by the Jewish Community Library and co-presented by the 28th Jewish Music Festival, KlezCalifornia, and the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring of Northern California.