Workshop:

Yiddish music archives come to life: community, creativity, revitalization

Singer and sound archivist Eléonore Biezunski will present materials, both live and recorded, from the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings and other such collections. Her recent PhD dissertation describes the context in which a small group of cultural activists simultaneously created the sound archive they needed at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to learn and re-appropriate the music of their ancestors, and instigated the revitalization of Yiddish (klezmer) music in the United States. Eléonore also examines the archive not only as a repository of documents, but as an historical phenomenon in its own right and as “a living space,” exploring the histories of the archival materials’ collectors and archivists. You are invited to hear the ways in which these musical treasures bridge the past, present, and future of Yiddish and klezmer creativity.

Eléonore Biezunski serves as Sound Archivist in the The Max and Frieda Weinstein Archives of YIVO Recorded Sound, where she has coordinated the Ruth Rubin Legacy website (ruthrubin.yivo.org). She has a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and holds a M.A. in Comparative Urban Geography from University of Paris X Nanterre (France). She has published several book chapters and articles on the history of Yiddish music and culture, and co-edited in 2015 a 6 CDs-set reissue of historical recordings of the Elesdisc Label (1948-1953), as the Assistant to the Director of the European Institute for Jewish Music in Paris (iemj.org). She is also a member of the Klezmer Institute‘s KMDMP and Klezmer Archive Project. As a singer and violinist, she has founded and led several projects and collaborated with a large number of well-known performers of Jewish music here and abroad. She won a Bubbe Awards in 2021 for her song “Tshemodan” in the category Best New Yiddish Song and is a recipient of a NYSCA Folk Arts Apprenticeship. Her recordings include Yerushe (IEMJ, 2016), drawing from Yiddish music archives such as Ruth Rubin’s, Beregovski’s and Kisselgof’s collections and Zol zayn (2014). www.eleonorebiezunski.com