Re: Yiddish folk song circa 1850's

[Lionel Mrocki <amrocks...>]

To clarify, I'm not particularly looking for songs from the American Gold Rush, 
not that they wouldn't necessarily do, so long as life in America, 
specifically, was not mentioned.  Come to think about it, any songs of the 
American gold rush era reflecting the hopes of immigrants seeking a new life 
(again, so long as American place names weren't mentioned) would possibly do 
very well.

Other songs which would suit, would be any folk songs of the day where 
yearning, nostalgia, creation of a better life etc were key themes. No doubt, 
yiddish-speaking jewry pre and post 1848 would have had something to sing about 
with these themes.

Jews also travelled to Australia following the discovery of gold in 1851 and 
would have brought their songs with them.  This is the material I'm hoping to 
work with.  Unfortunately, little archiving is available from those days in 
Australia as it was a very young country (the first fleet of convicts, 
including jews, from England arrived in 1788, and first fleet of free settlers 
in 1793) with
a tiny (white-invader) population pre gold rush, and few institutions existed 
the to record day to day jewish life.

The jewish museum here has some information, and graveyards and the Ballarat 
Synagogue yeild some history of those gold-rush days.  Most jewish immigrants 
to Australia then were anglo-jews whose music was, presumably, much the same as 
the other english-speaking immigrants, but as staunch yiddishists we're hoping 
to convey a broader image than that for a particular project.



Eliott Kahn wrote:

> At 03:04 AM 3/26/2004 +1100, you wrote:
> >Does anyone have any suggestions for a yiddish song meeting the
> >following criteria:
>
> Forget about it. The Eastern European Yiddish-speaking emigration began in 
> the late 19th century. The California Gold Rush of 1849 might have included 
> German-speaking Jews (Levi Strauss) fleeing the Conservative European 
> backlash after the revolutions of 1848. Many of them came from Bavaria 
> because of reinstitution of various prohibitions that had been rescinded 
> during the Napoleonic era.
>
> I'm not so sure they would have been so nostalgic, either, as the west and 
> southwest were wide open to development and there was far less antisemitism 
> than even in the eastern cities.
>
> Eliott Kahn

--
Regards,

Lionel Mrocki


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