Reflections on the Yiddish/African-American Convergences of Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell

• In Event: Convergences: jewblack is blackjew

Abstract

This paper examines the work of the Yiddish singer Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell in terms of the history of Yiddish and theories at the intersections of black and Jewish studies. Russell was trained as a classical opera singer but found Yiddish music, converted to Judaism, married a Rabbi, and is now working on projects that combine African-American Music with Yiddish music. At an historical moment when walls and divisions are being reinforced artists such as Russell present important counternarratives that confound borders and offer intersectional identities. For example, one of his projects, appropriately entitled Convergence (and which I am borrowing for the title of this panel), mines diverse cultural sources such as negro spirituals and Yiddish labor union songs with musical idioms ranging from jazz, blues, klezmer, and gospel. This groundbreaking work challenges the divisions between peoples and musical genres alike.

It is often said that Yiddish is a dying language. This is and is not true. On the one hand, many of the millions of people who were murdered in the Nazi genocide were Yiddish speakers. At the same time, assimilation on the other side of the Atlantic was rapidly reducing the vast numbers of Yiddish speakers in New York city—Yiddish daily newspapers were declining and many Yiddish speaking immigrants were actively encouraging their children to speak English, not Yiddish. On the other hand, there has been a creative and vibrant revitalization of Yiddish—and Russell is an exemplar of this spirit.

This paper will be the beginning of a book about convergences, tensions, and divergences in Jewish and black arts in the U.S. and France. I do not yet have a clear argument but I am exploring different artists whose work touches on these questions.

Author

• Brett Ashley Kaplan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign