Mark Slobin

The first volume focusing on film music as a worldwide phenomenon

Worlds of Film Music

Global Soundtracks

The original publications of the 1930s are scarcely to be found. The posthumous 1962 volume in the Soviet Union was limited to a tiny edition. Yet the work of the man who has been called "the foremost authority on Jewish folk music before the Holocaust," Moshe Beregovski, survives and is now available for the first time to the English-speaking world. As a member of the Jewish community as well as an ethnomusicologist in prewar Russia, Beregovski had not only the inspiration to preserve the spirit and vitality of the music that filled the lives of his people but also the professional training to document his findings to exacting standards. The first section of SIobin's book contains translations of some of Beregovski's responses to Jewish folk music in its living context during the 1930s. He raises important questions about ethnicity in his essay on interaction between Ukrainian and Jewish musical influences. His work on klezmer music. the music of the Jewish folk instrumental bands, is the most authoritative on the subject and includes his complete guide to fieldworkers in folk music. In another essay Beregovski analyzes an unmistakable trademark of Jewish folk music, the "altered Dorian" scale, and its symbolism in Eastern European Jewish culture. The second section constitutes Beregovski's anthologies of hundreds of folk songs with full Yiddish and English song texts. Each song is carefully notated exactly as it was sung and is accompanied by Beregovski's notes on origins and variants. Beregovski's essays and transcriptions form a pat and a symbol of what was lost in the mass destruction of Eastern European Jewish culture in this century. They form a cultural record of deep significance not only for the Jewish people, but also for folklorists and scholars as evidence of a distinctive music culture that interacted with—and influenced—the folk musics of Eastern Europe.

The Collections and Writings of Moshe Beregovski

Old Jewish Folk Music

a very short introduction

Folk music

Pioneer study in English of Afghan music particularly valuable to anthropologists and ethnomusicologists. Surveys the various facets of the music culture: instruments, styles, and music as a part of the ethnic mosaic of the region. Includes coverage of music in other areas of Central Asia.

Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan

"Chosen Voices is the definitive survey of an often overlooked aspect of American Jewish history and ethnomusicology, and an insider's look at a profession that is also a vocation.Week after week, year after year, Jews turn to sacred singers for spiritual and emotional support. The job of the hazzan--much more than the traditional ""messenger to God""--is deeply embedded in cultural, social, and religious symbolism, negotiated between the congregation and its chosen voices. Drawing on archival sources, interviews with cantors, and photographs, Slobin traces the development of the American cantorate from the nebulous beginnings of the hazzan as a recognizable figure through the heyday of the superstar sacred singer in the early twentieth century to a diverse portrait of today's cantorate, which now includes women as well as men. Slobin's focus on the current nature of the profession includes careful consideration of the sacred singer's part in creating and maintaining the worship service, the recent relationship between the rabbi and the hazzan within the synagogue, and the music that contemporary cantors sing. This first paperback edition features a new preface by the author. A thirty-five-minute cassette for use with Chosen Voices is available separately from the University of Illinois Press."

The Story of the American Cantorate

Chosen Voices

Ruth Rubin

From the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, a collection of traditional Yiddish folksongs by highly regarded ethnomusicologist Ruth Rubin, presented with added commentary from music scholars Chana Mlotek and Mark Slobin.

Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive

"Klezmer" is a Yiddish word for professional folk instrumentalist-the flutist, fiddler, and bass player that made brides weep and guests dance at weddings throughout Jewish eastern Europe before the culture was destroyed in the Holocaust, silenced under Stalin, and lost out to assimilation in America. Klezmer music is now experiencing a tremendous new spurt of interest worldwide with both Jews and non-Jews recreating this restless volatile, and vibrant musical culture. Firmly centered in the United States, klezmer has paradoxically moved back across the Atlantic as a distinctly "American" music, played throughout central and eastern Europe, as well as in many other parts of the world. Fiddler on the Move places klezmer music squarely within American music studies, cultural studies, and ethnomusicology. Neither a chronology nor a comprehensive survey, the book describes a variety of approaches and perspectives for coming to terms with the highly diverse array of activities found under the klezmer umbrella. Bringing to his subject the insights of an accomplished ethnomusicologist, Slobin addresses such questions as: How does klezmer overlap with, and differ from, the many other contemporary "heritage" musics based on an assumed connection with a group identity and links to a tradition? How do economics, artistic expression, and the evocation of the past interact in motivating klezmer performers and audiences? In what kinds of environment does klezmer flourish? How do stylistic features such as genre, form, and ornamentation help to define the technique, affect, and aesthetic of klezmer? Featuring a music CD with many of the archival and contemporary recordings discussed in the text, this fascinating study will interest scholars, students, musicians, and music lovers

Exploring the Klezmer World

Fiddler on the Move

James W. Kimball

Katherine K. Preston

Deane L. Root

URL: https://www.areditions.com/rr/rrotm/otm009.html This publication is the first-ever facsimile edition of a "binder¿s volume," a personal collection of sheet music, in this case that of a nineteenth-century young woman, Emily Esperanza McKissick of Albany, New York, who must have actively used her volume with her friends and family and who became a long-lived music teacher.Essays by leading American-music specialists illuminate the general themes of this unique volume and also provide detailed information (with copious reference to period source materials) about the McKissick family, musical life in mid-century Albany, the publication history of the forty-six songs, and an analysis of the penciled annotations made by Emily on the music itself. The complete binder's volume of Emily¿s favorite songs¿some common, some rare¿is presented, cover to cover, as a photographic facsimile.

Music in 1850s Albany

Emily's Songbook

Investigates American klezmer music: its roots, evolution and the revival that began in the 1970s.

Mark Slobin

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