The Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project (KMDMP) is an international digital humanities project to make materials collected by Zinovy Kiselgof during An-ski Expeditions and the Makonovetsky Wedding Manuscript—long-preserved in the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine—available for researchers and musicians around the world to engage with first hand.
Unlike other Ashkenazic expressive culture projects we’ve encountered before,
this project puts the primary sources directly into the hands of anyone who is interested and
then brings the community together to process and explore the materials.
KMDMP seeks to use modern digital humanities tools to transcribe and translate the music and notes contained in approximately 850 high-resolution scans from hand-written notebooks (hefts) and an accompanying catalogue in Yiddish into digital formats for further study and performance. In this first phase of the project, scans from the notebooks are presented largely “as found” with little editorial intervention so as to make the “raw data” free and available to all. The work of the project going forward is to digitally transcribe the music notation and to translate the notes and errata on the pages through a collaborative, volunteer process.
Background
In the Spring of 2017 Walter Zev Feldman presented a lecture on Jewish dance in Tokyo, followed by a workshop with Chitoshi Hinoue’s klezmer ensemble, which Mariko Mishiro (Tokyo University of the Arts) and Anna Rogers (née Gladkova, University of Tokyo) both attended. Feldman discussed the importance of the Kiselgof collections with Ms. Rogers before her upcoming journey to Kyiv, and Mariko Mishiro obtained a formal request for research access to the Kiselgof materials held at the Institute of Manuscripts. Rogers traveled to Kyiv that summer and was granted permission to create high-quality photographs of the pages of several notebooks housed in Archive #190.
The material comprises Jewish instrumental folk melodies collected by the Belarusian Jewish ethnographer Zusman Kiselgof (Zinovy Kiselgoff) during the An-ski field expeditions conducted between 1912-1914 in the Pale of Jewish Settlement (mostly modern Ukraine and Belarus). In collaboration with archivists in Kyiv who photographed the pages, Feldman helped partially translate Beregovski’s original catalogues from Yiddish, and Mariko Mishiro, Pete Rushefsky (CTMD) and Chitoshi Hinoue (Doshisha University, Kyoto) secured funding to cover the cost of the reproductions. In the end, about 850 photographs were produced, including over 1,000 musical items.
Call for Community Involvement
You can be a part of this project by digitally notating the tunes
and by transliterating and translating notes, catalogue information, and errata.
This project will grow and develop over time as translations and transcriptions are completed and our community of participants grows. The project team is looking forward to working together with our community of researchers and culture bearers to create a new kind of project that explicitly invites engagement with the “raw materials” of archival sources. In charting new ground, there will necessarily be iterations in how the project team grows to incorporate new members, and as the community of participants develops. Volunteers should sign up for the KMDMP mailing list to receive updates about a specific project communications, how to upload transcriptions, and how to become a project wiki editor. All volunteers will have the option to have their name listed on the project website and in all publications, and will receive a special discount on any printed editions and player folios that are published directly by the project.
“Some thirty years ago I had the luck to peruse these unique data in the Vernadsky library and today I see them here in amazement and awe. They reflect the real musical life of the remote past. In fact, that is the sensational treasure – I would say, the revival of the Atlantis of the mostly Byelorussian Jewry, recorded by so modest and yet so great Zusman Kiselgof, blessed memory. This project of yours is bringing back to life the wealth of that oral tradition, which was tragically forgotten and now, as if by a miracle, brought back to us, lucky descendants of that beautiful and priceless musical world.”
– Izaly Zemtsovsky, ethnomusicologist
Collaborating Institutions
The KMDMP Project thanks the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine for permission to share this precious historic resource. The Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Project has received financial support from the Center for Traditional Music & Dance. Ongoing administrative and grant writing support is provided by the Klezmer Institute.
The KMDMP Project Team
Eléonore Biezunski, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research | Clara Byom, Klezmer Institute
Christina Crowder, Klezmer Institute | Walter Zev Feldman, NYU Abu Dhabi, Klezmer Institute
Daniel Kunda Thagard | Chitoshi Hinoue, Kyoto University of Art and Design
Yonatan Malin, University of Colorado, Boulder | Mariko Mishiro, Tokyo University of Arts
Anna Rogers (Gladkova), University of Copenhagen | Max Rothman
Pete Rushefsky, Center for Traditional Music and Dance | Lyudmila Sholokhova, New York Public Library | Mark Slobin, emeritus Wesleyan University | Matthew Stein | Schyler VerSteeg |
Support KMDMP
If you would like to make a monetary donation to the project, use the button here or visit the Klezmer Institue Support page. To receive updates about this project, subscribe to the KMDMP mailing list via on the project page.
