🕵️old klezmers🎻

Library technician working in an accessibility library in Vancouver BC. admin of klezmor.im. MA UBC History 2019. YIVO fellow 2025. Independent researcher interested in klezmer musicians, migration, Yiddish literary world, Dutch East Indies political & journalism history, Indonesian anticolonial movement. Sporadic Wikipedia editor. He/him.📜😯🌈🎻 Current projects about New York City klezmer musicians & their milieu (1890–1945), klezmer copyright manuscripts in the US Library of Congress.

Other account: 🍃Carkner🥺 (npub100e…q9pa)
Blog: https://alte.klezmor.im/
instagram: @old.klezmers
bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/alte.klezmor.im

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Last Notes

2026-03-21 14:19:29 UTC

RE: https://klezmor.im/@carkner/116159920478250409
I still have some left and mailing out some of these klezmer #zines I made if anyone on here wants one.
#note18g4…kmf7

2026-03-02 13:55:24 UTC

I have copies left of the zine I made for my talk here in Montreal which I'd be happy to mail roughly at cost $10CDN in Canada/ $10US to USA/world. It's 20 pages and gives an overview of what the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society was and profiles of some interesting members. Feel free to DM.
#zines #fanzines #klezmer
https://cdn.masto.host/klezmorim/media_attachments/files/116/159/914/129/555/858/original/93a8332c33c6321a.jpg

2026-01-07 16:27:37 UTC

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sorry to add tourism into this but I was reminded how I saw Electrecord's office in Bucharest on google maps when I was there overnight in 2017. I went and peeked and there was just a big empty lobby inside with a piano and not a person in sight.
#Bucharest #Romania
https://cdn.masto.host/klezmorim/media_attachments/files/115/854/745/580/939/052/original/f6a3ef63daf02d66.jpg

2026-01-07 16:24:02 UTC

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really interesting and gets into the dark side of how Roma music was alternately exploited and repressed through different eras. as someone who collects Electrecord LPs (the state record label from Romania) it's a good reminder of how much was constrained and never recorded.
#Romania #folklore #Roma #Lautar #electrecord

2026-01-07 15:52:18 UTC

fascinating new article by a friend about how musical folklore was repurposed in communist Romania
https://theatticmag.com/features/2514/romani-music-in-communist-romania%3A-propaganda%2C-control%2C-and-resistance.html
#Romania #folklore #ethnomusicology #Romani #lautar

2025-07-08 01:41:54 UTC

17 years on youtube, less than a minute long, but I still think this is one of the folk music videos that hits me the hardest on there... legendary violinist Ion Albeşteanu, and the very professorial cobzar Marin Cotoanţă... ah, to sit among the reeds in capes and hammer out a hora with your chum..
https://youtu.be/C_KwDPou4pE?si=uLd-iTWIR7rpYfxt
#Romania #FolkMusic #fiddle #cobza #violin

2025-06-27 14:58:17 UTC

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A thread of recent #klezmer albums worth checking out – Oktopus "Brahms, Balkans & Bagels." I think it's the third album by this #Montreal based group. Good arrangements & eclectic mix of different folk traditions.
https://oktopus1.bandcamp.com/album/brahms-balkans-bagels
#JewishMusic #bandcamp #clarinet

2025-06-27 14:54:29 UTC

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A thread of recent #klezmer albums worth checking out – Debut album by the Red Hot Chilli Schleppers (lol) "Schleppin'". IMO has a bit more of a jam band thing going on than traditional klezmer, but playful and with some good musical chops.
https://schleppers.bandcamp.com/album/schleppin
#clarinet #JewishMusic #Montreal

2025-06-27 14:50:38 UTC

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A thread of recent #klezmer albums worth checking out – Brivele's "Khaveyrim zayt Greyt." A #Seattle #Yiddish folk punk duo with #banjo and #accordion. Some new versions of old songs and some new settings of left-wing Yiddish poems from Proletpen and affiliated movements.
https://borschtbeat.bandcamp.com/album/khaveyrim-zayt-greyt
#JewishMusic #FolkPunk #Bandcamp

2025-06-27 14:44:00 UTC

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A thread of recent #klezmer albums worth checking out – Black Rooster Kapelye's "Vos mir Zaynen." A Latvian project drawing on historical Jewish scores collected by folklorist Emilis Melngailis. Multilingual, multi-style, including members of Forshpil.
https://blackroosterkapelye.bandcamp.com/album/vos-mir-zaynen
#Latvia #Folklore #JewishMusic #Fiddle #Yiddish #accordion

2025-06-27 14:24:23 UTC

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A thread of recent #klezmer albums worth checking out – the Magid Ensemble's "Shterna and the Lost Voice." A klezmer-inspired #soundtrack to a live show, mostly written by accordionist Mattias Kaufman, with #violin and #cello. Playful, introspective, triumphant, just like the live show.😁
https://borschtbeat.bandcamp.com/album/shterna-the-lost-voice
#accordion #bandcamp #JewishMusic

2025-06-27 14:18:57 UTC

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A thread of recent #klezmer albums worth checking out – Jake Shulman-Ment and Abigale Reisman's "Two Strings." Two of the top klez fiddlers of the US East Coast, IMO this collaboration displays their love of crunchy string ensemble rhythms, baroque melodies and nigunim.
https://borschtbeat.bandcamp.com/album/two-strings
#Fiddle #Cimbalom #JewishMusic #violin #bandcamp

2025-06-27 14:10:25 UTC

A thread of recent #klezmer albums worth checking out –
Zoë Aqua's "In a Sea of Stars" recorded in two Romanian synagogues during a recent tour. Like a fusion of klezmer and Transylvanian fiddle music, the logical result of her several years of field work in the region.
https://zoeaqua.bandcamp.com/album/in-a-sea-of-stars
#fiddle #cimbalom #bandcamp #JewishMusic #Transylvania #Romania

2025-03-14 22:43:44 UTC

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Well, these are great. AFM Local 802 directories from 1922 onwards. Basically lists of all NYC union musicians and their instruments and home addresses, so perfect for cross referencing names from other sources or figuring out more about someone. Would contain pretty much any active old NY klezmer musician,. although some figures I've been curious about may not really have been playing proper gigs and not in here.
#MusicHistory #LaborHistory #MusicUnions
https://cdn.masto.host/klezmorim/media_attachments/files/114/163/169/101/211/683/original/c2d03a5ce24197e1.jpg

2025-03-14 11:21:22 UTC

today my long-planned research appointment at the Tamiment Library & Wagner Labor Archives at NYU has finally come up. I'm mainly looking for music union materials from before WWII (A.F.M. locals 310 + 802) and maybe stuff about United Hebrew Trades if they have anything relevant to me. we'll see what I can find! If nothing else the union members booklets with address (of which I've only seen snippets on facebook) will be quite helpful.
#LaborHistory #MusicHistory #archives #MusicianUnion

2025-01-12 21:26:51 UTC

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OK, I managed to upload it with the workaround. thanks! I wouldn't have known where to find that info...

2025-01-12 21:19:37 UTC

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ah, there've been complaints there. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Help_desk#PD-US-no_notice_advertisement_no_longer_accepted_by_commons_upload_wizard

2025-01-12 21:17:01 UTC

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thanks for confirming. I already have this page open, would it be an appropriate place to say so ? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Copyright_rules_by_territory/United_States

2025-01-12 21:11:41 UTC

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strange, I found a good public domain photo for this article but #Wikimedia Commons is rejecting any US public domain tags today. What am I doing wrong? I've done this many times. The most appropriate one is PD-US-not-renewed but PD-US isn't working either.
In the documentation site there's a space between not renewed but that doesn't work either atm.
#Wikipedia #WikimediaCommons
https://cdn.masto.host/klezmorim/media_attachments/files/113/817/432/957/591/712/original/ea49127d9746e123.png

2025-01-12 20:40:12 UTC

bit of a dry topic even for me, but since I kept coming across it in my research this week I thought I'd make a #wikipedia article for this defunct music licensing org founded by some of my historical heroes Sholom Secunda, Alexander Olshanetsky, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Jewish_Composers,_Publishers_and_Songwriters
#klezmer #JewishComposers #MusicHistory

2024-09-22 18:49:15 UTC

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Thanks in particular to Evgenia Khazdan (whom I don't know), whose Biobibliographic Index (2023) contains an excellent and detailed timeline of Beregovsky's life which helped me sort through some of the contradictions in the written record. (Due to the passage of time and the loss of records during the upheaval of the 20th century, probably some questions will never be answered definitively.)
https://archive.org/details/moisey-beregovsky-biobibliography/page/n19/mode/2up
#SovietJews #musicology #ethnomusicology #SovietAcademics #Yiddish

2024-09-22 18:43:17 UTC

After an editor removed a bunch of uncited info and left his article with some major gaps, I made the time this weekend to rewrite the biographical sections of Moshe Beregovky's #wikipedia article.
Beregovsky (1892-1961) is the most important academic of #klezmer music, #Nigunim and #Yiddish songs, and did research during the Soviet period which would be impossible to replicate today when the generations who remembered the late Russian Empire period are long gone.😌📚
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moisei_Beregovsky

2024-08-30 18:58:44 UTC

Halfway through this latest Radiant Others #klezmer #podcast episode interviewing Zisl Slepovitch & Stephen Naron about their work selecting, arranging, performing and recording music and poems found in the #holocaust survivor and witness testimony at the Fortunoff Video Archive. I have one of the CDs in this series but didn't know all this about how they came to exist. Often these songs were collectively composed in WWII labour camps and recalled by a single survivor.
https://radiant-others-a.blubrry.net/zisl-slepovitch-stephen-naron-fortunoff-video-archive/

2024-08-29 14:27:50 UTC

FYI. Sad to hear that apparently Klezkanada north of Montreal (it just ended, I wasn't there) had a huge COVID outbreak, I've heard of at least dozens now out of the 200+ attendees. Including plenty of close friends of mine. This with some protocols that were apparently not enough:
https://klezkanada.org/summer-retreat/covid-19-safety/
Makes me appreciate the Klezcadia festival I was at in Victoria back in June which had stricter rules (no common eating, no group dancing etc). Although some of it is always to chance of course

2024-08-27 17:35:08 UTC

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I admit I don't get out much but the one time I walked into a restaurant that had old fashioned pressurized seltzer bottles on every table was at this amazing non kosher Jewish restaurant in Budapest a decade ago (now sadly closed)
https://www.frommers.com/destinations/budapest/restaurants/kdr-tkezde
as you can see in this article (which also updates that they intend to reopen it)
https://turizmus.com/cikk/vendeglatas/gerendai-karoly-vezetesevel-nyit-ujra-a-legendas-kadar-etkezde