Arkady Gendlers
Song World
by Mark Slobin
The Yiddish folksong had a hard
life in the twentieth century. First
it fell victim to the urbanization
and modernization of east
European Jewish life, then to the
brutal regimes of Hitler and
Stalin. In the United States, its
largest refuge area, assimilation,
the shock of the Holocaust, and
the creation of the State of Israel
led to wholesale neglect of a thousand-
year tradition of deeply
expressive culture .
This is why people like Arkady
Gendler are so valuable. He
comes from a generation that
grew up in the twilight of the
Yiddish song, where there was
still enough cultural radiance to
sink into ones skin. He learned
many songs as part of an energetic
youth group that not just
inherited a tradition, but worked
on creating a generational repertoire
ranging from political to
pop. He knew people who wrote
their own songs, which his circle
used as a thread to guide them
through the labyrinth of modernity
and dislocation.
The Yiddish song was always an
eclectic collection of inspired
moments of feeling, selected and
shaped over the centuries. In the
Renaissance and the early modern
era, folksingers would adapt the
touching or lurid ballads and lullabies
of their gentile neighbors to
suit a Jewish communitys feelings.
Many, many songs are about
love and crisis, arising out of a
young peoples set of sensibilities.
In modern times, poets and teachers
wrote folk-like texts and tunes
that filtered into mass consciousness
with amazing speed, spreading
through Jewish networks
across huge swaths of eastern
European countryside and cities.
In no time flat, they became
beloved folksongs. With Arkady
Gendlers repertoire, we can see
how this process of folklorization
and memory continued well into
the twentieth century.
Arkady Gendler can stand in for a
whole class of Yiddish folksingers
who were very aware of their ro l e
as learners and transmitters. Not
just naive culture carriers, they
were rather organic intellectuals,
very sensitive to their community's
needs and aspirations.
Due to the good fortune of his survival
and longevity, Gendler is carrying
out his role in the revivified
and newly energetic Jewish community
in which he lives, one of a
whole set of cities where Yiddish
culture has amazed us all by its
ability to spring up like grass after
the heavy feet of history have
traipsed past. With his trip to the
United States in 2000 and the
issuing of this album, Arkady
Gendler has enriched us all with
his legacy of songs.
