Raysn & Lite: the Jewish Musical Atlantis?, w. Zisl Slepovitch

Lecture #41 in Joshua Horowitz’s series, The Promiscuous World of Jewish Music

Raysn & Lite: the Jewish Musical Atlantis?, with Dr. Zisl Slepovitch

Monday, March 22, 11am Pacific Daylight Time/2pm New York/ 6pm London/ 7pm Paris/ 8pm Tel Aviv. Note that the U.S. is on Daylight Saving Time March 15, but London, Paris, and Tel Aviv are perhaps not yet. Confirm the time yourself! Length: 1 – 2 hours

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Dr. D. Zisl Slepovitch will show the multi-layered, multi-faceted, and ever-changing musical face of the “Jewish Lithuania,” a vast territory that roughly coincides with that of the former Grand Principality of Lithuania and its lands in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This happens to be the least studied region of the Eastern and Central European Ashkenazic musical cultures. Demographically, the Litvak Jews were a much smaller population in relation to the Polish, Ukrainian, Bessarabian-Romanian, and other Jewish communities, and its heritage, although amply documented, still didn’t make it as prominently into the emigrants’ musical art as it did into that of Ukrainian, Galician and Romanian Jewish musicians. This talk will be an attempt to present as full a picture of the Litvak community’s musical culture as possible, based on archival and field materials, including those collected by D. Zisl Slepovitch and his mentor and research partner, Dr. Nina Stepanskaya (1954–2007).

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This project has been made possible in part by a grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, in partnership with the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Grants for the Arts, and The California Endowment.