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From Klezmer to Rap – the Power of Jewish Music

February 11, 2022

In Nazi Germany, Jewish musicians were expelled, persecuted, murdered. Many later languished in obscurity. Today, forgotten artists are being rediscovered. Encounters with Jewish musicians, past and present.

https://p.dw.com/p/46ocO
Israelische Musikerin Noga Erez
Image: Tonje Thielesen

Arts 21 delves into Jewish music.

 

Israelische Musikein Noga Erez
Image: DW/S. Hofmann

Voice of a generation

Confident and candid, Noga Erez sings about the reality of life in Israel, the generational clash, and the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

 

 

Daniel Kahn, Musiker
Image: Uwe Steinert

Yiddish pop music

Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" in Yiddish? For his new album, US musician Daniel Kahn translated songs and poems ranging from Tucholsky to Dylan into Yiddish, his grandmother's mother tongue.

 

 

Abbildung von Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
Image: Privat

When music is a lifeline

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was 18 when the Nazis deported her to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1943. Because she could play the cello, she became part of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz – and that saved her life.

 

Berlin | Operette „Frühlingsstürme“
Image: Oliver Becker/ Naxos Deutschland

Forgotten, then rediscovered

Jaromir Weinberger composed world-famous operas in the late 1920s. Like many other Jewish artists, he fled from the Nazis into exile – then his music was all but forgotten. Now Berlin's Komische Oper is staging some of his works.

 

Paris | Violinist Gidon Kremer
Image: imago/Leemage/imago stock&people

Music as a family tradition

As the descendant of a German-Swedish-Latvian-Jewish violinist dynasty, Gidon Kremer had to take up the violin – and he became famous around the world. What does the family legacy mean to him? An interview.

 

 

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