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AUDITORY SNAPSHOTS FROM THE EDGES OF EUROPE
- Michael Beckerman, Jessica Schwartz, Roland Huntford, Roger Buckton, Michael Cwach, Kevin C. Karnes, Timothy J. Cooley, Bret Werb, Petra Gelbart, Jeffrey A. Summit
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- Journal:
- Transactions of the Royal Historical Society / Volume 22 / December 2012
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 06 December 2012, pp. 199-221
- Print publication:
- December 2012
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- Article
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This article presents thirty ‘auditory snapshots’ from a wide variety of geographical locations and contexts in order to elaborate several points. First, we believe that the study of history cannot be separated from the study of sound, whether in the form of ‘soundscapes’ or pieces of music. Second, we find that considerations of edges, into which we fold such things as provinces, peripheries and frontiers, can be greatly enriched by looking at a broad range of musical phenomena, from the liturgy of Ugandan Jews to reggae-infused Polish mountain songs and from the sounds of Mozart's Black contemporary Saint-Georges to Silent Night on the Southern Seas. Finally, drawing on certain ideas from James C. Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed, we argue that paradoxically, in music, the middle often has unusual properties. In other words, musical structure mimics the ongoing battle between those in positions of authority and those who wish to evade that authority. Beginnings and endings, then, tend to be sites of power and convention, while middles attempt to subvert it. While culturally and geographically we may contrast centres and peripheries, in music the centre is often the edge.
Stanisław Wielanek, Party na Nalewkach
- from BOOK REVIEWS
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- By Bret Werb, He earned his MA in ethnomusicology at the University of California at Los Angeles with a thesis on the American Yiddish stage composer Joseph Rumshinsky
- Edited by Michael C. Steinlauf, Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- Focusing on Jewish Popular Culture and Its Afterlife
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 23 November 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 November 2003, pp 528-528
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Summary
Tracks: 1. ‘Rebe’, 2. ‘Bajgełe’, 3. ‘Kochaj mnie’, 4. ‘Madagaskar’, 5. ‘Paczka’,
6. ‘Balia’, 7. ‘Dlaczego ja’, 8. ‘12 rodzin’, 9. ‘Sardinenfisz’, 10. ‘Szabasówka’,
11. ‘Mein Jidisze Mame’, 12. ‘Ameryka’, 13. ‘Oj bidy da’, 14. ‘Rebeka’,
15. ‘Kupcie jaja’, 16. ‘Srulek’, 17. ‘Jojne karabin’, 18. ‘Pipek’, 19. ‘Stary Josel’,
20. ‘Dalej Jojne żydowskiego’, 21. ‘Bełz’
No one interested in Stanisław Wielanek's songbook of inter-war hits should miss his recording of Yiddish-tinged ‘oldies’ Party na Nalewkach. Released on vinyl in 1980 and later available on cassette, until recently the album was hard to find in either format. Reportedly, the publisher let it go out of print after receiving complaints from Jewish tourists (apparently a target audience) that songs such as ‘Jojne karabin’ evoked unattractive stereotypes or even summoned up the spectre of the deferential singing and dancing little Jew associated with the term majufes. Whatever the reason for its disappearance, Wielanek's album has now reappeared on CD with a new cover and title (it was first known as Szmonces i Lyrika), and with five new selections added to the earlier version's sixteen. Aficionados of Jewish popular song will find a veritable lost continent of fascinating repertoire attractively arranged and performed by Wielanek and his band, Kapela Warszawska. Something of an archaeologist and troubadour, Wielanek first discovered the genre of szmonces as an ardent collector of musical folklore from Warsaw. The encounter was inevitable, since, as Wielanek says, Jewish songwriters dominated the field of popular music in Poland between the wars. Scholars and performing artists alike should be grateful to him for reviving this repertoire and bringing to light the names of its sadly forgotten creators, both with this CD and with its most useful accompanying book.
From ‘Madagaskar’ to Sachsenhausen: Singing about ‘Race’ in a Nazi Camp
- from AFTERLIFE
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- By Bret Werb, He earned his MA in ethnomusicology at the University of California at Los Angeles with a thesis on the American Yiddish stage composer Joseph Rumshinsky, Barbara Milewski, completed her Ph.D. dissertation on the mazurka and Polish musical nationalism at Princeton University in 2002.
- Edited by Michael C. Steinlauf, Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- Focusing on Jewish Popular Culture and Its Afterlife
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 23 November 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 November 2003, pp 269-278
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- Chapter
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Summary
AMONG the many remarkable cultural artefacts to come to light after the Second World War is a large and varied repertoire of songs created by Polish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. Most common of these compositions are parodies of songs popular before the war. The prevalence of this genre in the camps (as elsewhere) may be accounted for by the fact that parody is one of the easiest of processes for generating a new work, requiring only that the author add newly minted lyrics to a pre-existent melody. But while the formula of invention for parody song is fairly straightforward, its psychological effect on a knowing listener can be rather more complex. Indeed, one can hardly imagine the resonance of such music heard in the setting of a concentration camp. Drawing on well-known melodies and familiar styles such as the tango, waltz, or foxtrot, prisoners who listened to, created, and performed these songs could reclaim, if only for a moment, some part of their lost popular culture. Yet paradoxically, and as many survivors attest, these same songs, with their unsparing depictions of camp life, helped prisoners push aside thoughts of life before captivity and so preserve their mental balance during those difficult years.
In this chapter we look at one parody song, ‘Heil, Sachsenhausen’, and also examine the song parodied, ‘Madagaskar’, itself a satirical consideration of the Jewish predicament in inter-war Poland. We speculate that ‘Heil, Sachsenhausen’ served not only as a narrative of camp experience, but also as a darkly comic condemnation of Nazi ‘racial purity’ laws. Finally, we suggest that this parody song may have functioned as a zone of inquiry for the author's personal reflections on German– Polish and Polish–Jewish relations before and during the Second World War.
‘Heil, Sachsenhausen’ was written by a Polish political prisoner, Aleksander Kulisiewicz, in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen in 1943. A journalist by profession, Kulisiewicz, born in Kraków in 1918, had been denounced for anti-fascist writings and was arrested soon after the German takeover of Poland. Sent to Sachsenhausen, near Berlin, he wrote by his own tally fifty-four songs over the course of nearly six years at the camp. He was liberated in May 1945 and devoted most of the rest of his life to gathering and documenting the songs and music created in concentration camps.