The Sounds of Summer

When I was a kid, summer was all about music. I went to art camp every year, and we had daily “assembly” at lunchtime. Some of the most famous people in the world performed for a bunch of ungrateful kids who didn’t know who they were. It was the kind of thing core memories are made of.

When I was a little older, summer was about free shows in our local park and saving up to catch big-name acts at Jones Beach.

It feels like a lifetime since I’ve felt that kind of magic on a warm summer night. But this summer, rather unexpectedly, I had the chance to travel to Poland, as part of a study tour. On a balmy Friday night in Krakow, we walked over to Cricoteka, an enormous cultural center and museum on the Vistula River. Chairs were set up on the center’s outdoor plaza, dogs were running around, and as the sun set, my friend Maria Ka took the stage. She was there at the special invitation of Festivalt, a friendly competitor and/or alternative to the long-running (33 years and counting) Krakow Jewish Culture Festival.

Until then, I’d only heard Maria sing on her recordings. This was something else: hypnotic, ethereal, a cosmic mekhaye under the stars.

If you are going to be in Warsaw and visit the Polin Museum this August, you can catch Maria Ka’s “Yiddish Cosmos,” a “multilayered, multimedia sound, visual, and textual Universe.” It’s part of a new rotating gallery at Polin called We Are Here, featuring the work of nine Jewish artists. (Maria Ka will be featured August 7-19.)

This was my second trip to Poland in the past two years, and I feel as if every time I visit, my relationship with the country changes and deepens. And, of course, the country changes, too, just as everything else does. When our group was in Warsaw, we had an expert tour around the former area of the ghetto, and I got to see more parts of the city that were completely new to me. Before the war, Warsaw was the global capital of Yiddishland, and for Yiddishists, there’s always a slight feeling of being out of time, like walking forward through an invisible past.

Of the many figures who came to be associated with Yiddish Warsaw, editor-writer-mystic-activist Hillel Zeitlin stands out, even among such an illustrious crowd. As described in the YIVO Encyclopedia entry on the Zeitlin family, “His Warsaw home was a meeting place for Jewish writers and journalists—‘a literary house,’ as captured in his son Elkhonen’s memoir. Zeitlin himself became synonymous in his later years with Polish Jewry.”

Zeitlin became known for his “philosophical neo-Hasidism,” and after leaving the Hasidic milieu of his youth, he rededicated himself as an adult to a new kind of Hasidic life, one that was serious and elevated, while integrating socialist ideals and active engagement with the world. “Zeitlin longed for a rarified and spiritually regenerated Judaism, one based on his idealized vision of early Hasidism and tied also to an image which appears in the Zohar—the circle around Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai.”

Zeitlin’s poetry collection Gezangen tsum eyn sof (Songs to Infinity) was published in Warsaw in 1931. This year, Melbourne-based group The Bashevis Singers released a folk-trance setting of Zeitlin’s poems, with the same name. The group comprises three cousins who grew up speaking (and singing) Yiddish with their Polish-born grandparents. Their sound is part 1960s folkie family band sweetness, cut against the grain with a modern melancholy. It’s a beautifully contemplative setting for Zeitlin’s mystical longings and a great listen for anyone already thinking about the spiritual reckonings of Elul, just around the corner.

You can see the Bashevis Singers live in concert at this year’s Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto, on Sept. 1.

Around the same time Hillel Zeitlin was writing Gezangen tsum eyn sof, the poet known as Anna Margolin (born Rosa Lebensboim) published her sole collection of poetry, simply titled Lider (Songs). Today, her work is considered among the best Yiddish poetry of that time. But when Lider was published in 1929, it found its warmest appreciation in Warsaw, not New York, where she lived and wrote.

Margolin’s “Mayn Heym” (My Home) paints a portrait of a damp, rainy night, the kind where houses, not children, are rocked to sleep and rainbows appear not after rain, but through tears.

Vern un nit vern
Durkhn regnboygn fun trern

Becoming and not-becoming
Through rainbows of tears

Someone, a mother perhaps, pauses at the doorway. A child sits warily at the window, illuminated by moonlight. The child trembles at her approach. But why?

After a few years of inactivity, the Swedish musical duo project Shtoltse Lider (Proud Songs) has returned with a gorgeous new musical setting of “Mayn Heym.” The duo is made up of Ida Gillner and Livet Nord, and their setting includes a new Swedish translation of the poem, sung along with the Yiddish.

Of course, not all new Yiddish music is of the mystical-trance-melancholy genre. One of my absolute favorite party bands, Dobranotch, just released a new album called Vander ikh mir lustig (I wander cheerfully). The first single released is a romantic call to forget the wedding and just “Antloyf mit mir” (Run Away With Me).

It’s not out until Aug. 20, but my friend Ariane Morin also has a great new party record called Tantshoyz (Dance House). Montreal-based Morin is a saxophone player, and with this record she joins an elite group of klezmer bands led by women. Morin wrote all seven tunes, making this one even more elite. Like the name of the album suggests, this is music built for dancing. And if you can’t make it to KlezKanada this year, at least get Tantshoyz and do a couple hora circles around your living room.

Summer of 2024 kicked off, Jewish music-wise, with an epic concert on June 3, honoring the legendary trumpet player (and my friend) Frank London. More than just a trumpet player, London is a towering figure in the modern klezmer world, a cofounder of the Klezmatics, a composer, teacher, mentor, and friend, and a voraciously curious human being who never seems to stop moving or creating.

London is currently undergoing some heavy medical treatments for blood cancer, and the concert was conceived as a way for his legion of friends and fans to send him into that treatment on a tidal wave of love and good vibes, even as his condition made it impossible for him to attend, as previously planned.

The concert was called “Spirit Stronger Than Blood,” taking its name from a song London composed for the memorial of Jewlia Eisenberg, of blessed memory. Eisenberg also suffered from blood cancer, and before she passed, the two of them got to talk about it. “Spirit Stronger Than Blood” became London’s ironically defiant cri de coeur.

The whole concert is available to watch from the comfort of your home, and I highly suggest you do. It’s a snapshot of London’s embracing musical world: his friends, influences, and dazzling decades of creativity.

Spirit Stronger Than Blood also became the title of a new album from London and The Elders. This makes three recordings London has already or will release in 2024! First was the insanely fun Chronika with the Klezmer Brass All Stars, and available soon from John Zorn’s Tzadik label is Brass Conspiracy.

To close this wrap-up of new music, I want to direct your attention all the way back to the summer of 2020. Instead of being depressed about a raging pandemic with no end in sight, London gathered his friends and frequent collaborators and took the elevator to the roof, where the air was as fresh and healthy as it gets in New York City. There they recorded what was, for me, the essential jam of 2020—and perhaps of this summer, too—“Shabos in Feld.” Yom-Tov Ehrlich’s Yiddish song is a call to joy and faith, despite everything.

ALSO: Aug. 4 is the Great Yiddish Parade, bringing together a Klezmer big band, singers, and street theater. It’s in Stockton-on-Tees (northern England), part of the Stockton International Riverside Festival. … Kleztronica (electronic klezmer and/or Yiddish house music) is in the middle of a summer tour. Catch it in Montreal on Aug. 8 at La Sala Rossa, in collaboration with Yenne Velt and global legend Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled, and in Northampton, Massachusetts, on Aug. 10 at Brick House Community Center, alongside local punk bands. … Friend of the column and multimedia genius Yevgeniy Fiks has a new exhibit for Yiddish.Berlin called “NATO in Yiddishland,” Aug. 15-28. See their website for all information. … If you’ll be in Transylvania at the end of August, you can catch some of the best klezmer and Jewish music in the world. Jake Shulman-Ment (violin), Jeremiah Lockwood (guitar, voice), and Francesca Ter-Berg (cello) will perform over multiple dates, with a program including old-time klezmer fiddle music, Yiddish songs, and cantorial recitatives: Tranzit House, Cluj, on Aug. 24; Sinagoga Mare, Sibiu, on Aug. 25; Synagogue, Medias, on Aug. 27; and Cultural Center, Baia Mare, on Aug. 29. … Ready to start learning Yiddish? Or to brush up on your language skills? The Paris-based Maison de la culture Yiddish—Medem Library will offer five levels of Yiddish language instruction, with courses starting in September. All classes will be virtual or a hybrid of on-site and virtual. See the full schedule here. … You can catch the Bashevis Singers live, in person and virtually, in concert on Sept. 4, at YIVO. Make sure to reserve tickets now. … I am beyond thrilled to announce that this September, I will be teaching again for the Yiddish Book Center. Join me for a six-session course called “Sacred Time and Liminal Space: Ashkenazi Folk Magic at the Threshold.” This course will have a special focus on Rosh Khoydesh and the High Holidays. More information and registration here.