Yiddish Curiosities: a library of wonderful but forgotten Yiddish songs from the late 1920s and after (includes Polish Jewish Cabaret). Have a listen!

Now that I've decided it's important to have subtitles on my Yiddish videos, I'm going back to the first ones I made, when I first started performing with Aviva Enoch, before we made our cd I Can't Complain (But Sometimes I Still Do), and adding captions to them.

This one for instance:



My friend Scott Davis had told me the story of the classic, well-known and well-loved folk song "Hob ikh mir a mantl" (I Have a Coat). I loved the story the way he told it and looked up the song. To my displeasure I discovered that (a) it had an undesirable la-la-la type refrain and (b) the story was not as good as the one Scott had told me...


... so I wrote a melody and adapted the text slightly to reflect Scott's version. This is the result. You can get the sheet music and mp3 if you like:

---

---

Labels: humor & satire, making a living (poverty), nostalgia, songs for sale