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For
immediate release
April 21, 2005
Folksinger Revisits Songs of the
Holocaust in Free Performance on May 5
SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. – In observance of Holocaust Remembrance
Day, Yom HaShoah, musicologist and folksinger Jerry Silverman will
perform songs of the Holocaust at 7 PM on Thursday, May 5, in Rooke
Theatre at Mount Holyoke College. The program is free, and the
public is welcome. Doors open at 6:30.
Silverman’s hour-long program combines songs and readings
from The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust, a collection
of 110 rare songs in 16 languages, historical notes, and survivor
testimonies. The audience will be led on an eight-decade journey
from the first Lager-Lied (concentration camp song) – composed
in the Börgermoor concentration camp in Germany in 1933 – through
the events leading up to the Holocaust, across the wartime years,
and up to the present. The songs sing of despair, hope, rage, resistance,
and even humor in the face of the unspeakable.
Silverman, one of America’s outstanding folksingers and guitar
teachers, is among the most prolific authors of music books. His
more than 200 books include folksong collections, anthologies,
and method books for guitar, banjo, and fiddle.
“With titles like ‘I Have No Native Land,’ ‘Close
Your Little Eyes,’ ‘Song of the River Bug’ and ‘My
Mother Wanted So to See My Wedding Day,’ the 110 songs in
[The Undying Flame] are both epic and personal,” wrote the
New York Times in 2002. “Mr. Silverman sought out material
in places like the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr in Paris,
finding piles of poems, ‘which were obviously once songs.’ Some
he set to music himself, using traditional melodies. Others came
from survivors whom he met during his eight years of research.”
The program is sponsored by the departments of Jewish studies,
music, and theatre; the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life;
the Dean of Faculty’s office; and the Jewish Student Union.
Yom HaShoah begins at sundown on Thursday, May 5. |
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