Which makes Dmitri Zisl Slepovitch’s new CD, Raysn: The Music of Jewish Belarus, so much more remarkable. His music is propulsive, dynamic, and often surprising—the essence of live performance. Slepovitch is probably the foremost keeper of Litvish Jewish culture in North America. He’s definitely the only one combining academic ethnographic work with a distinctive artistic vision. Raysn encompasses East and West, Jewish and non-, and builds a bridge between historic and modern performance. Though rooted in a somewhat obscure tradition, the result is enormously entertaining.

Even the name of his band, Litvakus, is both freighted signifier and playful connector. In Yiddish, ‘Litvakus’ denotes that which is related to Litvaks, the Jews of Lithuania. But for Slepovitch it’s also a play on the words “Litvak U.S.” (he recently became an American citizen). Or, as he told me recently, a kind of subliminal command: Litvak us/Litvak you/ Litvak me. If you thought Litvaks were the humorless counterparts to fun loving Galitzianers, you might be surprised.

But before we go any further, some terminology should be established. Lite (Lithuania) is a historical term denoting much more than what falls within the borders of the modern Lithuanian state. Jewish Lite is more or less contiguous with the historical Grand Duchy of Lithuania and encompassed parts of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, and, of course, Lithuania. In Yiddish, Belarus is known as Vaysrusland or (the more obscure) Raysn. The culture of the Belarussian portion of Lite, the multilingual, multicultural Raysn, is where Slepovitch, a native of Minsk, plants his flag.

Slepovitch is a Litvak, but a fun Litvak, leaning more in the direction of Mickey Katz than the Vilne Gaon, more Moyshe Kulbak than Chaim Grade. True to his Litvak roots (and his doctorate in ethnomusicology) the CD booklet contains a wealth of information, pinning each piece, old and new, within a specific locale. The text provides amply for those who care to know time signatures, instrumentation, and notes on phrasing. For the average user, the most important information is all there: song lyrics in YIVO standard transliteration next to English translation, with context for each song’s provenance.

The booklet may speak to the detail-oriented ethnomusicologist, but the music is pure aural pleasure. This is undoubtedly party music: dance tunes are at the center of Raysn. Traditional kolomeykes and shers sit next to original compositions like the very Brooklyn ‘Q Train Volekh.’ Slepovitch has assembled an incredibly talented group of musicians on Raysn. Craig Judelman’s fiery fiddle-work hints at a path from the swamps of Raysn to the hills of Appalachia. Sam Weisenberg’s percussion keeps the party moving with a light but driving energy. The most unusual sound comes from the generous application of drone, something not found often in modern-era klezmer recordings. Taylor Bergren-Chrisman on bass and Joshua Camp on accordion not only make this klezmer drone work, they make it sing.

Slepovitch notes that use of drone accompaniment was typical of the multicultural, Jewish Belarussian style. Extensive use of heterophony and microtone scales create an unusual dissonance, all of which make Raysn sound both distinctively contemporary yet rooted in place and time. Slepovitch’s virtuosic clarinet playing, compositional skills, infectious singing, and multilingual mastery propel Raysn to the forefront of contemporary Jewish music.

The Raysn album release event takes place tonight at 7pm at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

Related: Actor Shane Baker on Translating ‘Waiting for Godot’ into Yiddish

The post Litvakus’ New Album “Raysn” is Party Music for the Klezmer Set appeared first on Jewcy.

I recently sat down for an interview with Shane Baker: actor, translator, Executive Director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, bon vivant and all around most unusual Yiddishist I know. The pretext was my writing about the current production of the New Yiddish Rep’s Yiddish-language version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, “Vartn af Godo” (translated by Shane, beautifully directed by Moshe Yassur). The lure was the taco truck parked outside my building at lunchtime.

Shane and I hadn’t seen each other since the middle of the summer, when he and the other members of the New Yiddish Rep (actors Rafael Goldwaser, Allen Lewis Rickman, and NYR artistic director/actor David Mandelbaum) left for Ireland with Vartn af Godo and I was heading to Klezkanada, the Jewish arts retreat near Montreal.

After playing Vartn af Godo at the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, Shane stayed on in Ireland for a kind of heritage trip (a rare reminder that he isn’t actually Jewish). He came back to North America for Toronto’s Ashkenaz festival, where he performed his riotous neo-vaudeville tribute, “The Big Bupkis!  A Complete Gentile’s Guide to Yiddish Vaudeville,” then returned to New York for the current run of Vartn af Godo at Barrow Street Theatre as part of Origin Theater’s 1st Irish Festival.

Shane had been touring the world to great acclaim. I had just premiered a new English-Yiddish play to a crowd of 30 at Klezkanada, in a room whose most prominent acoustic feature was a deafening ventilation hum. We had a lot to catch up on.

Our conversation ranged from deliciously vulgar to intimidatingly erudite within a few bites of taco. When I asked him whether he got in touch with his roots in Ireland, I was treated to a story far too filthy for Jewcy. With great regret, I steered him away from vaudeville and back to the avant-garde Waiting for Godot. Why translate it to Yiddish? I asked. When I had gone to see it a few nights before, it was clear how many Yiddish speakers were in the house just from where the laughs were.

“I wanted to translate Waiting for Godot, and we staged the play, all in line with the great Yiddishist dream—I think first set out ‘shvarts af vays’ [in black and white] by Ber Borochov—that the world’s greatest works must be translated into Yiddish in order to nurture the language, just as works in Yiddish must be translated into the world languages in order to show people what we have,” he said.

A task like translating Beckett brings up the deepest existential questions for new Yiddish art. For whom is this new translation? Is it for translator, audience, or both? There’s no question that there were a handful of folks in the audience (for example, some Hasidic friends of mine) who were introduced to Beckett via the Yiddish translation. But it goes without saying that the task of translating world literature to bring it to the Yiddish ‘masses’ no longer burns with the same urgency as it did for Borochov and his early-twentieth century colleagues.

On the other hand, Shane tells me that in Ireland—where one would expect even fewer Yiddish speakers—he overheard people after the show saying that they had never understood Waiting for Godot as they had in Yiddish. And this was NOT a Yiddish speaking audience.

I asked Shane if he’d found anything new in the text with this new production. “A yid lebt mit bitokhn (a Jew lives with hope),” he replied. “For me, Beckett is all about hope.” In the optimism of Godot’s Vladimir Shane sees one of the things he fell in love with about Yiddish, “the insistence of the older generation of Yiddishists; the joy and purpose in what they were doing… Vladimir has his questioning moments, but he’s the driving force that keeps them waiting. It’s a purposeful waiting, a Jewish waiting.”

I have to agree. Though on the surface it seems like nothing happens in Godot, what keeps you on the edge of your seat is the development of the relationships between these four brutalized humans. How will they choose? Between life and death? Between hope and despair? These are questions with the most vitality when done with the deepest specificity, which is why I think Godot in Yiddish holds such power for audiences, whether or not they speak Yiddish. Great art needs no further justification.

Waiting for Godot shows through September 21 at Barrow Street Theater in New York. Purchase tickets here. (Use discount code “WAIT35” for 20% off.)

Rokhl Kafrissen writes about Jewish life and culture from a distant corner of New York City. Her new play is a Yiddish-English gangster ghost romance called “A Brokhe” (A Blessing).

(Image by Ron Glassman, via New Yiddish Rep)

The post Actor Shane Baker on Translating ‘Waiting for Godot’ into Yiddish appeared first on Jewcy.