“The Jews Have Always Been a Singing People”: YIVO Celebrates Ruth Rubin

by LEAH FALK

The best parts of the Yiddish past are fragile: a yellowing installment of a serialized novel in Der tog, a barely legible handwritten letter, a fragment of song passed down from mother to daughter. Ruth Rubin, the celebrated scholar, singer, and collector of Yiddish folk music, knew how ephemeral this last, private, often unwritten transmission could be, and dedicated her life to capturing ordinary Yiddish-speakers’ performances and interpretations of thousands of songs—in kitchens, parlors, and factories.

But even her tireless efforts couldn’t completely stall decay. Before Rubin died, she donated a portion of her un-archived materials to YIVO, and as of 2012, 125 hours of her tapes were badly in need of preservation and digitization. That summer, YIVO sound archivist and Klezmatics lead singer Lorin Sklamberg, along with Yiddish singer Jeanette Lewicki, began the huge project of digitizing the Rubin archive. As of last spring, 357 songs (out of 2000) had been digitized. What does this newly accessible slice of the Rubin corpus contain?

Listen to Ruth Rubin singing Di mame is gegangen in mark arayn nokh koylen [Mama has gone to market for coal].

Several new wave klezmer groups have made use of songs from the Rubin archives in recent years, including the long-running Klezmatics. As a singer herself, Rubin would have applauded the revival of her recordings in new musical contexts. But it was the publication of Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive in 2007 (edited by Mark Slobin and Chana Mlotek) that realized a dream that Rubin didn’t live to see: an accessible anthology of songs from her collection with her own accompanying commentary. Like Rise Up Singing, the beloved anthology of singable and strummable songs that followed the American folk revival of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Yiddish Folksongs encourages the reader to sing along.

Beginning March 10 and through April 7, Sklamberg will lead what might be the first-ever class on Rubin’s corpus and collecting methods, with the help of her field recordings and papers, and Yiddish Folksongs. The five-session course, “Klip klap in goldn tir (Knock Knock on the Golden Door): Yiddish Folk Songs from the Ruth Rubin Archive” will take place at YIVO.

And on April 6th, Sklamberg will join Professor Mark Slobin for a symposium at YIVO, “Passing the Torch: Jewish Music Archives and the Future of Yiddish Song.” This discussion among archivists, performers, and scholars about the next generation of Yiddish music will be punctuated by Sklamberg’s performance of songs from the Rubin archive.

Attend the program.

Leah Falk is YIVO’s Programs Coordinator.