Eastern European Jewish Music Traditions: From the Concert Hall to the Hit Parade
MUS6-5b-Mon2
Dr. Hankus Netsky
This course will take place virtually on Zoom. Participation in this course requires a device (ideally a computer or tablet, rather than a cell phone) with a camera and microphone in good working order and basic familiarity with using Zoom and accessing email.
October 21 - November 18
Through readings and recordings we will explore the evolution of Eastern European Jewish music in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Class topics will include the rise of Yiddish art music, Yiddish folksong of the Holocaust period, the music of Yiddish cinema, the many hybrid forms of Eastern European Jewish music that developed in twentieth-century America, and the contemporary klezmer and Yiddish music resurgence. This course will work well as a continuation of Eastern European Jewish Music Traditions, but no prior knowledge of Eastern European Jewish music is required.
Roughly the same amount of lecture and discussion.
Readings will be provided on a class website.
45 minutes to 1 hour.
Dr. Hankus Netsky is co-chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Improvisation Department and founder and director of the internationally renowned Klezmer Conservatory Band. He has composed extensively for film, theater, and television, collaborated closely with Itzhak Perlman, Robin Williams, Joel Grey, Theodore Bikel, and Robert Brustein, and produced numerous recordings. His essays have been published by the University of California Press, the University of Pennsylvania Press, the University of Scranton Press, Hips Roads, Indiana University Press and the University Press of America. Temple University Press published his book Klezmer, Music and Community in 20th Century Jewish Philadelphia in 2015.