Related and not-so-related Jewish Music pages

Links from specific klezmer bands, are located with the specific information about each band--consult the klezband list. Similarly, personal websites are listed in people's entries on the klezcontacts page. I hadn't realized how big and sprawling this page is. I will try to organize it! In the meantime, this is what I've got.

• The Jewish Music WebCenter, http://www.jmwc.org, attempts to bring an academic perspective to Jewish Music on the web. The mission of the JMWC is: "to provide a forum for gathering and presenting information on academic, organizational, and personal activities in Jewish music today. Information is provided to encourage and support the enjoyment, study, creation and pursuit of knowledge of Jewish music."

• The Yosl and Chana Mlotek Yiddish Song Collection—all five volumes are now online, browseable by category or searchable by title. Live performances of some songs also available. [(]The five volumes: Songs of Generations; Songs of the Holocaust: We are Here; Pearls of Yiddish Song; Mir Trogn a Gezang; Yom-Tovdike Tag (Holiday songs)]

• Klezmer Academy, curated by clarinetist Sherry Mayrent, has klezmer tunes, discussions of klezmer theory, practical lessons on style, Mark Rubin's old content on Belf's Romanian Orchestra, musings on current and past trends in the music and its performance, and other topics on all aspects of klezmer and its history.

• Sherry is also the founder of the Mayrent Collection, a critical collection of over 9000 78 rpm disks: mayrent.wisc.edu/collection-page/

• Mark David, of The Yiddish Voice radio show asks: "Looking for information about Jewish, or especially a Yiddish, song? Try searching the wonderful Robert and Molly Freedman Jewish Music archive's Yiddish Song Database:www.library.upenn.edu/detail/collection/robert-and-molly-freedman-jewish-sound-archive. The trick to taking advantage of the confusing interface is to scroll below the long (albeit welcome) description of the collection to the buttons. Choose one that narrows your search appropriatedly (e.g., "Jewish Music" or "klezmer"). Browse away!

• A French contact writes: "A great website about the wonderful Yiddish singer and actor Aaron Lebedeff opened at the address aaronlebedeff.free.fr There is a French version and an English version. Maybe I will make a Yiddish and a Russian version. Enjoy with the lyrics, the mp3s, the complete 3-pages biography, an enormous number of pictures (available in a fews weeks), and buy the two-CD set with many songs of Lebedeff for only 25 $ (available in 2 weeks)!

• Peter, of the Aaron Lebedeff site, spotted this interesting source of digitized, out-of-print Jewish recordings: savethemusic.com. The website states that it exists to:

  Save the Music is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of cultural music through its digitization and placement on the Internet. Founded by Roman Ajzen a few years ago, Save the Music has already become the leading collector of Jewish Music LP's in the world. Just as important is our goal to become a virtual meeting place for performers to interact and post upcoming concerts, events and releases. We aim to preserve the past and assist its renaissance in the future.

• KlezmerGuide.com is a comprehensive cross-reference to klezmer recordings and sheet music sources. It is maintained by Allen Lutins.

• Elie Rosenblatt points out that there is a list for the Israeli Klezmer scene: see groups.google.com/d/forum/israelklezmer?hl=en

• In the San Francisco Bay Area, KlezCalifornia has a guide to Yiddish culture resources. Check out their website at www.klezcalifornia.org.

• Where would klezmer be without klezmer dancing? Helen Winkler writes: "I have set up a web page about Yiddish dance and would like to invite ... feedback and input. My goal is to share information about these dances and to make it more available. I welcome additional dance descriptions, articles etc. etc. I am new to the area of Yiddish dance. The latest location (7/23/99) is at: www.yiddishdance.com/"

• Seattle Klezmer is a page maintained Bernice Maslan: "Seattle's klezmer resource for klezmer theory, rhythm, modes, local klezmer performances and bands, open klezmer jam, camp and event listings."

• Free downloadable Jewish sheet music for Chanukah with melody line, Hebrew text, English translation & transliteration. Enjoy singing with your family or congregation: excellent for sing-alongs. Great supplementation for Jewish homeschoolers & Bar/Bat Mitzvah preparation. I will be adding music for Shabbat & the other holidays soon. hebrewthroughsong.blogspot.com

• Detlev Mueller began the first German Klezmer Pages several years ago, and these have grown nicely. Materials are available in English and in German.

• More recently, Stefan Bauer has added a second German Klezmer site, www.klezmer.de focusing on german and international klezmer music. "It is supposed to give an overview to the music, especially what's happening in germany. The site has grown rapidly since the last few month with 3 people's writing." (Stefan Bauer, 11/21/99). Very attractive. Primarily in German.

• From Guenther Schoeller, posting to the Jewish Music mailing list, following a discussion on the availability of the much-requested Isak Loberan klezmer books: … a website where you can get more information about Isak Loberans' klezmer books and the CD. And where you can order. Here is the URL: www.loberan-klezmer.de.

• Michel Borzykowski maintains this Geneva, Switzerland Klezmer page in French and English.

• There is now a Swedish Klezmer Association, which maintains The text is in both Swedish and English, but the music is still klezmer.

• From Helen Winkler: "... there is a large collection of Yiddish song videos taken recently: www.youtube.com/user/aheymproject/videos. The videos are part of the Aheym project, aheym.com/ described as: ”The Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories (AHEYM—the acronym means "homeward" in Yiddish) includes approximately 800 hours of Yiddish-language interviews with 350 individuals, most of whom were born between 1900 and 1930. The interviews were conducted in Ukraine, Romania, Moldova.” There aren’t 350 up there yet, but there are quite a few to view.

• The burgeoning interest in Jewish music is bringing more and more incredible cantorial resources online. music.org, "A repository of mostly Ashkenazi Jewish liturgical music" is where you will find online scans of music from the Blue Book and growing collections of Sulzer and Lewandowsky. (updated, 5-Jul-2023).

• The Chazzanim Farband (Jewish Ministers Cantors' Association of America and Canada) has a new website. Jeffrey P. Lieuwen invites everyone interested in Chazzanut to have a look at www.thejmca.org.

• There is also a Cantorial music site at Hebrew University's Jewish Music Research Centre: jewish-music.huji.ac.il/content/shulmusic-jewish-liturgical-music.

• In addition to the shulmusic materials, above, Irwin Oppenheim maintains a "comprehensive site on Jewish liturgical music, with a large collection of cantorial sheet music, annotated links and background information." www.chazzanut.com

• Steve Weintraub writes to the Jewish-Music mailing list: "This may be old news, but while searching for a tune for "Shoshanos Yaakov" for Purim, I came across this incredible site of online, full-length nigun recordings, Heichel Menachem: www.chassidus.com/audio/nigun/www.chassidus.com/audio/nigun/. There must be about 100 recordings, most with commentary in a real geshmakt chassidic yiddish. Many sound like vintage recordings. A real treasure trove."

• But wait, there's more! Andy Tannenbaum writes about www.piyut.org.il . They have well over 1000 recordings of piyutim (including nigunim).

• Yoel Taieb has set up a website devoted to nigun, www.nigun.info

• One of this site's first links was to a page about the Abuyadaya Jews by Matthew Meyer. That page is long gone, but it's best successor is probably this webpage by Kulanu, Kulanu: Abuyadaya who made contact with the Abuyadaya as a direct result of Meyer's webpage. A few years later, Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, of Tufts University, did a Smithsonian Folkways Recording of the music of the Abuyadaya Jews.

• A whole series of (polyphonic) klezmerarrangements are available on www.stifterhof.de. The arrangements are in different grades for 2-3 melody instruments, bass and Piano / git. of some famous trad. melodies. You can download midi, pdf und cap files

• There is a format called "abc" that is apparently a great way to encode music. If you know about the format, go directly to trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Klezmer/. Otherwise, Ernest Murphy has explained it on our mailto page.

• One of the most famous American Yiddish to pop music crossovers is "Bei Mir Bist Du Sheyn," originally written by Sholom Secunda in Yiddish, then translated and made into a big hit. The Delaware Valley Rhythm and Blues Society, has gathered the relevant information about the song together on their "Bei Mir Bist Du Sheyn" page, located by Michael Makiri.

• The Yidlid—Yiddish songs—website, ייִדישע לידער. Each song in the site (almost thirty, and growing) is complete with Yiddish and translitterated text, French and English translations, vocabulary, score, audio file, links to recordings, etc. Visit rama01.free.fr/yidlid

• The most exciting website in this regard is probably the "Yiddish Song of the Week" blog, maintained by Itzik Gottesman, of The Forward. Each week, a new song, with words, commentary: yiddishsong.wordpress.com

• Richard Aylward announces the launch of 'Der yidisher gramofon,' yiddish-sources.com/der-yidisher-gramofon-78-rpm-recordings-european-jewish-music which includes articles, broadcast info, and discographies of early Yiddish recordings. (posted 12/25/08)

• Itzik Gottesman, of the Forverts, notes that there is now a site offering Soviet Yiddish MP3s. The interface is crude, but check it out (in Yiddish and English) at yiddish.lenin.ru/indexen.html.

• Philip "Fishl" Kutner is a wonderful and warm person who lives south of San Francisco. He puts out a lovely (print) newsletter, Der Bay networking folks doing anything with Yiddish around the world. Check out his website at derbay.org/

• Mendele: Yiddish Literature and Language, is a wonderful mailing list about all things yiddish. For more information, they have a web page at http://yiddish-sources.com/mendele-mailing-list-yiddish-literature-and-language

• Peter of the Aaron Lebedeff site spotted this French-language site about Judeo-Arabic music from Algeria: yafil.free.fr. It contains pictures, biographies, old recordings, MIDI files, sheet music.

• Paula Kirman maintains a world music site, and has a nice section on Jewish and Israeli music. She's always looking for additional links.

• All I know about them is that they printed an article by Tamar Adams, daughter of Sephardic music maven and ethnomusicologist Judith Cohen, and were gracious enough to let us make the article available here on the KlezmerShack. On the other hand, I am very pleased to be able to provide a link to the Canadian Society for Traditional Music, cstm-sctm.ca/, publishers of "The Canadian Folk Music Bulletin".

• For accordion players, there is an amazing website maintained by Jack Woehr, people.well.com/user/jax/rcfb/freereed.html who has also been heard to play a fine bulgar or accordion doina on occasion.

• Djembe Online is the Scandinavian forum for world art, world music, world culture. They have numerous reviews of Klezmer and Jewish music, in both English and Danish. Web: www.djembe.dk

• For those whose Swedish is better than mine, do visit the online version of Lira magazine, the Swedish review of folk and world music.

• Likewise, for German lovers of folk musics around the world, the new site of Folker Magazine looks promising, at www.folker.de/.

• If you are more adept in English (or also adept in English) take a look at Roots World

• For folk music mavens, Sing Out! Magazine has been an essential stop since 1950.

• Australians interested in Israeli Folk Dance (it may be worth reminding the site publisher that Israeli Folk Dance is NOT synonymous with all of Jewish dance, only a small part thereof!) or Hebrew Song may be interested in two sites maintained by Aura Levin Lipski. The organization and little things like copyright notices seem to be lacking, but over time these may develop.

• Marsha Edelman notes: There's an amazing site at www.rokdim.co.il where you can get virtually everything you can imagine—old songs, new songs. They don't have the old albums, per se, but collections of things, organized by dance type (beginners, couple dances, horas, line dances, etc.) or you can make special requests and they will burn a CD for you. Most impressively, they pay rights to ACUM and others for everything they sell!

• Dunav is an Israeli-based website (organization?) devoted to Balkan Dance. Dunav invites you to come download music, song lyrics, and dance videos from our site. The site will be presenting five new songs, a dance video, and new song lyrics each month. The material on the site is from our dynamic folklore database, an ongoing, 10 year project with access to more than 12,000 digitized songs, 2000 dance video clips, and a growing collection of song lyrics, dance notes, maps, and folk costumes. Some of the music is from proprietary sources that aren't widely available outside of Israel . The dance videos are from Dunav's project to document dances that haven't been available commercially. You can find out more about us at the Dunav web site: www.dunav.org.il.

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe www.yivoencyclopedia.org