Wax cylinder recordings from the An-ski expedition

[Lori Cahan-Simon <l_cahan...>]

For those of you not on the Mendele mailing list, this was posted in the
last edition:



Subject: Wax cylinder recordings from the An-ski expedition

Re Mechel Zlotowski's post about field recordings from the An-ski
ethnographic expedition, two CDs have been released to date:
"Treasure of Jewish Culture in Ukraine" (Kiev:  Institute for
Information Recording;  Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, 1997),
and "Materials of J. Engel Ethnographic Expedition 1912 (The Historic
Collection of Jewish Music 1912-1947, vol. 1) (Kiev:  National Academy
of Sciences of Ukraine;  Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine;
Institute for Information Recording, 2001).  Both CDs reproduce
recordings that were originally made on wax cylinders.  I am not sure
how they are being distributed; I received copies through private
channels, from individuals who are associated with the project that is
responsible for transferring the recordings from wax cylinder to CD.

That project is spearheaded by the Vernadsky National Library of
Ukraine (Kiev), where the wax cylinders are housed -- and not by the
University of Ukraine (i.e., Kiev University?).  The Vernadsky
Library's Jewish Section -- which is headed by Irina Sergeeva (its
music librarian is Lyudmila Sholokhova) -- is where much of the extant
An-ski-expedition materials are located.  The field recordings were
transferred there from Leningrad circa 1929 or 1930, and were
incorporated into the collections of the Institute for Jewish
Proletarian Culture, headed by Y. Liberberg.  They were augmented by
additional field recordings made by the Soviet Jewish
ethnomusicologist, Moisei (Moyshe) Beregovski, which are now also in
the Vernadsky Library.  At the beginning of World War II these
materials were among archival collections that were evacuated by the
Soviets to the Urals, and they were returned to Kiev after the war.
The wax cylinders were not so much "forgotten" (and if they were indeed
forgotten, it was in Kiev and not in Leningrad/St. Petersburg) as they
were victims of official Soviet policies regarding the "Jewish
question."  They came to light during the mid-1990s, as the Jewish
Section of the Vernadsky Library gathered collections that had been
dispersed (or hidden) around Kiev.

Zachary Baker


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