The Klezmer Archive Project
You are cordially invited to the first
International Kiselgof Community Digitizathon
January 16-17th, 2021
1,400 Tunes | 850 Pages | 40+ Hosts | 30 Hours | Go!
You are invited to the first International Kiselgof Community Digitizathon on January 16-17th, 2021! The Digitizathon is an approximately 30 hour long virtual gathering of musicians, linguists, scholars, and enthusiasts who are working to digitally notate and translate the newly released Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Manuscripts. The Manuscripts are comprised of 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).
What: The Digitizathon is an approximately 30 hour virtual gathering of musicians, linguists, scholars, and enthusiasts who are working to digitally notate and translate the newly released Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Manuscripts. Participants will be able to join an open discussion room or join a feature session on a specific topic. Orientation sessions for newcomers to the KMDMP project will be held several times during the event. For more information about the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project, visit www.klezmerinstitute.org/kmdmp.
Where: On Zoom. Throughout the weekend two discussion rooms will be available – one will have themed discussions (orientation sessions for the KMDMP materials and resources, music notation software tips and tricks, Yiddish and Russian language focus, repertoire focus, and more) and the other will be open for discussion about the music, notating, translation, or anything else that comes up during the weekend.
When: From 12noon Eastern on January 16th through approximately 6pm Eastern on January 17th.
Who: You! Plus, musicians, linguists, scholars, and klezmer music enthusiasts from around the world! A who’s who of experts in klezmer music and Yiddish culture will host in open discussion rooms and feature sessions.
How to Register: Register to participate via the form link below. Registrants will will be given access to a variety of documents in the “KMDMP Commons” and the links for the event! If you have any questions, please contact us here.
“The klezmorim interviewed by Kiselgof were professionals, with an eclectic collection of different tunes in their repertoire that let them earn a living, generation after generation, adapting to the new tastes and audiences. Their voices faded through numerous social cataclysms – but luckily, the archive survived. While these materials are very important for research, their biggest impact is going to be when they return to fingers of the musicians and the feet of the dancers, when they continue their journey through human hearts. Luckily, we discovered this time capsule at a post-revival time, when there is a generation of new klezmorim more than capable of processing and reviving this repertoire. The communities of Yiddish Summer Weimar, Yiddish New York, Klez Kanada, etc. are the real heirs of those who contributed to the archive in the first place. Why not pass them their inheritance, and let them develop it further – while helping to create a curated academic edition?”
Support
Registration for this event is offered free of charge. Donations to the KMDMP fund at the Klezmer Institute will support the admninstration time necessary to put on this and future events. If you or someone you know would like to make a financial contribution, you can donate via PayPal below, or visit the Klezmer Institute Support page.
What does the digitization work look like??
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Why is it useful to digitize this music??
Transforming the hand-written notation into a digital format helps to make the music contained in the notebooks accessible to wider audiences and facilitates performance and study of the material. The digitized notation and text will also become a “test corpus” for the Klezmer Archive Project.
