{"id":36643,"date":"2021-04-02T01:45:17","date_gmt":"2021-04-02T08:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=36643"},"modified":"2021-03-31T21:46:31","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T04:46:31","slug":"a-great-grandmothers-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2021\/04\/02\/a-great-grandmothers-song\/","title":{"rendered":"A great-grandmother\u2019s song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesse Waldman was inspired by his great-grandmother Adele Waldman to reimagine the Yiddish song \u201cPapirosen.\u201d (photo from Jesse Waldman)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Several weeks ago, I was offered a commission by the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts to do a musical piece for their Covid Chronicles series. A Jewish musician living in Vancouver, I made a video of the classic Yiddish tune \u201cPapirosen.\u201d It has special significance, and it\u2019s something I want to share with others.<\/p>\n

As far back as I can remember, my family has been into taking photos, videos and recordings \u2013 I have at least three huge albums and a bunch of VHS tapes from birthdays, bar mitzvahs, etc. As well, there was a piano in my grandparents\u2019 living room and music was always part of our lives. Before my grandmother passed away, she gave me a cassette that had been made on a reel-to-reel tape machine in Toronto in 1958. It included my mom at 2-and-a-half-years-old singing nursery rhymes, interviews with other family members, and my great-grandmother, Adele Waldman, singing traditional Yiddish folk songs.<\/p>\n

Adele was my grandfather\u2019s mother and she died before I was born. The quality and soul of her voice is absolutely stunning \u2013 some of the most moving singing I\u2019ve ever heard, both haunting and soothing at the same time. I could listen to the recordings a million times and still be amazed by the off-the-cuff performances she did in the kitchen of my grandparents\u2019 house.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Jesse Waldman (photo from Jesse Waldman)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I recently went through my storage closet and found a binder of sheet music that used to live in my grandparents\u2019 piano bench. It was mostly big band and jazz tunes, but also a handful of Yiddish songs, including \u201cPapirosen,\u201d which was one the songs Adele sang on those tapes. As I put the sheet music on my music stand and began to study it, I was transported back to Eastern Europe in the 1920s.<\/p>\n

Written by Herman Yablokoff in that decade, this song has the most dark yet beautiful melody, and I absolutely adore it. I looked up the lyrics (translated into English) and was struck again by the powerful storytelling about a young boy selling cigarettes, or papirosen<\/em>, on the streets, offering an introspective look at his inner world.<\/p>\n

For the Shadbolt-commissioned piece, I combined Adele\u2019s recorded performance of \u201cPapirosen\u201d and a reimagined rendition of the song that I performed on guitar. After trying a few different things, I landed on the idea of sharing the first segment of her performance (her rendition is five minutes long) followed by a one-take performance by myself. The video can be found at youtube.com\/watch?v=RWAVr2W0vvo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesse Waldman was inspired by his great-grandmother Adele Waldman to reimagine the Yiddish song \u201cPapirosen.\u201d (photo from Jesse Waldman) Several weeks ago, I was offered a commission by the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts to do a musical piece for their Covid Chronicles series. A Jewish musician living in Vancouver, I made a video of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[20446,3429,20448,4242,20447,9473,186],"class_list":["post-36643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-adele-waldman","tag-family","tag-folk-songs","tag-history","tag-papirosen","tag-shadbolt-centre","tag-yiddish"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}