Exploring Brooklyn's Jewish Heritage: A Look at Yiddish Culture through Archives, Performances, and Communities
The exuberance and physical presence that are at the core of theater, and especially events like the Queer Tribute to Aaron Lebedeff, have been hobbled by the epidemic. However, this year's festival, conducted online due to the Omicron-variant surge in New York City, managed to shine a light on Yiddish culture in a modern and inclusive way.
The Queer Tribute to Aaron Lebedeff concert began with a video of a song and dance performance of Lebedeff's 1921 record "Hulie Kabtzen" from the 1996 film adaptation of Nikolai Erdman's play "The Suicide." The concert, one of the evening concerts hosted by the festival, featured a variety of singers, including Mikhl Yashinsky, a star of "Fidler Afn Dakh," the recent Yiddish language production of "Fiddler on the Roof."
Aaron Lebedeff, a beloved early 20th-century Yiddish singer known for iconic songs like “Rumania Rumania,” is a key figure in Yiddish musical heritage. Honoring his work in such a concert highlights how the contemporary Yiddishist community honors its roots while embracing diversity, including queer identities. The Queer reading of Aaron Lebedeff’s songs subverts the pretentions of high art, offering democratizing, utopian tendencies through the bold dramatic gestures of the vulgar, the extreme, and the sentimental.
The musical arrangements in the Queer Tribute version of Lebedeff's "Az Men Farzucht" are conceptually linked to the original record, with borrowings from current American pop music offering a musical counterpart to the boldness of its lyrics. Erica Mancini played a synthesizer solo in the arrangement, her choice of timbre and stylistic markers referencing late 1960s rock, creating a disoriented temporal and idiomatic space.
The Queer Tribute to Aaron Lebedeff concert holds significance in the context of Yiddish New York and the contemporary Yiddishist community as a vibrant celebration and revival of Yiddish culture through a queer and modern lens. The festival, founded in 2015 and a flagship event of New York Jewish culture, presents events that attract both elder Jews and the youth-oriented politically conscious Jewish activist scene focused on social justice and gender and sexuality activism.
The festival focuses on Yiddish language, music, and culture, with Klezmer music holding a central place as a focus of performance. The concert's organizational principle of Queerness helped draw together a cast of artists to create a new work of art collectively in a short period of time. The concert symbolizes a dynamic cultural continuity, maintaining and celebrating Yiddish musical heritage through the figure of Aaron Lebedeff, engaging contemporary queer perspectives, and strengthening Yiddish cultural identity in New York as both historical and evolving.
The Queer Tribute to Aaron Lebedeff concert is a testament to the intersections between historical Yiddish culture and contemporary social identities, fostering inclusivity and renewed interest in Yiddish language and arts within New York’s diverse Jewish and queer populations. It underscores how Yiddish culture continues to be a living tradition that resonates with and adapts to present-day values and community dynamics.
Camp, a broadly enough shared characteristic that it could stand as a catch-all point of connection tying together any of the shund (low brow) genres of Yiddish theater with queerness, is a key element in the concert's success. The concert's reimagining of Yiddish heritage in ways that affirm LGBTQ+ identities within this historic community framework reflects current trends in queer cultural reclamations within ethnic and linguistic minority communities.
In summary, the concert symbolizes a dynamic cultural continuity: maintaining and celebrating Yiddish musical heritage through the figure of Aaron Lebedeff, engaging contemporary queer perspectives, enriching the Yiddishist community’s inclusiveness, and strengthening Yiddish cultural identity in New York as both historical and evolving.
- The festival's event, the Queer Tribute to Aaron Lebedeff, showcases the blend of traditional Yiddish culture with contemporary lifestyles, especially in the realm of fashion-and-beauty and personal-growth.
- In the world of education-and-self-development, the festival serves as a platform for exploring and understanding diverse cultural narratives, such as the queer perspective in the context of Yiddish history.
- Career-development opportunities abound in the festival, with events like the Queer Tribute concert offering skills-training for artists in areas like music production and rock synthesizer playing.
- Entertaining performances and concerts at the festival, like the Queer Tribute to Aaron Lebedeff, exemplify the fusion of pop-culture and sci-fi-and-fantasy influences, in this case with the reimagining of Yiddish heritage.
- The festival serves as a job-search hub, connecting elders in the Yiddish community with the youth-oriented politically conscious Jewish activist scene focused on social justice and gender and sexuality activism.
- The Queer Tribute to Aaron Lebedeff concert is a celebration of both the Lower East Side's culture of celebrity and the broader pop-culture landscape, reflecting the vibrant diversity of New York City.
