Re: Yiddish folk song circa 1850's

[sylvia schildt <creativa...>]

Again, for a song can captrues the tsamtsis of it all, consider YAM LID,
original Hebrew by Judah Lalevy, Yiddish version by Khayim Nakhman Bialik
(1873-1934) - MUSIC BY M. SHNEYER (1885-1942.  SEE MLOTEK RED BOOK - PEARLS
OF YIDDISH SONG, PP212, 213.


TEXT:

Kh'hob fargesn ale libste,
Khhob farlozt mayn eygn hoyz;
Kh'hob dem yam zikh opgegebn;
Trog mikh, yam, tsum muters shoys.

Refran:
Un du, mayrev-vint getrayer,
Trayb mayn shif tsu yenem breg,
Vos mayn harts mit odler-fligl
Zukht shoyn lang tsu im a veg.

Breng mikh nor ahin besholem, --
Nokh dem fli zikh dir tsurik,
Grisn zolstu ale libste
Un dertseyl zey fun mayn glik.

Refran:
Un du, mayrev-vint getrayer,
Trayb mayn shif tsu yenem breg,
Vos mayn harts mit odler-fligl
Zukht shoyn lang tsu im a veg.

And the melody is beautiful.

Sylvia Schildt
Baltimore, Maryland


 -on 3/27/04 4:30 AM, Lionel Mrocki at amrocks (at) optushome(dot)com(dot)au 
wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
> ******************************************************************************
> 
> Visit <<http://www.klezmania.com.au>> for the latest information on
> KLEZMANIA;  Performance dates, Sound files, Photos and more.
> 
> Visit <<http://members.optushome.com.au/amrocks/karenlionel.html>>
> to see our family.
> 
> ******************************************************************************
> 
> 
> 

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+