Singing Songs of the Polish-Jewish Underworld Between Pre-World War Two Street Music and 21st Century Performance A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2019 Izabella S Goldstein School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 1 Table of contents LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................. 6 LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ........................................................................................................... 6 ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................... 7 DECLARATION ................................................................................................................................ 8 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ................................................................................................................. 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................... 9 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 12 RESEARCH AIM AND QUESTIONS .............................................................................................................. 13 STATE OF CURRENT RESEARCH ................................................................................................................. 14 Songs of thieves and prostitutes ................................................................................................. 14 Folklorists, collectors, ethnographers ......................................................................................... 14 Jewish music today ..................................................................................................................... 16 Practice as research .................................................................................................................... 18 Applied and activist ethnomusicology ........................................................................................ 19 Gender ........................................................................................................................................ 20 My contribution .......................................................................................................................... 21 DEFINING SONGS OF THE JEWISH UNDERWORLD ......................................................................................... 23 RESEARCH METHODS ............................................................................................................................ 24 Historical inquiry in analysing songs ........................................................................................... 24 Singing the Archive ..................................................................................................................... 26 The recording ......................................................................................................................................... 27 Autoethnography ........................................................................................................................ 29 Participant observation .............................................................................................................. 30 Interviews ................................................................................................................................... 34 Musicological Analysis ................................................................................................................ 35 PRIMARY SOURCES ............................................................................................................................... 35 Songs in Yiddish .......................................................................................................................... 35 Songs in Polish ............................................................................................................................ 39 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ..................................................................................................................... 40 CHAPTER 1: JEWS OF WARSAW: THE UNDERWORLD AND ITS MUSIC ............................................ 43 THE POOR .......................................................................................................................................... 44 THE UNDERWORLD ............................................................................................................................... 49 JEWS AS ‘OTHERS’ ................................................................................................................................ 53 2 WARSAW AS A CENTRE OF YIDDISH CULTURE IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY ........................................................ 54 Literature and the underworld ................................................................................................... 55 Jewish theatre: the poor and the underworld ............................................................................ 56 JEWISH MUSIC IN POLAND WITHIN THE COMMUNITY ................................................................................... 59 Jewish Music Before 1939 ........................................................................................................... 59 Jewish Music During the Second World War .............................................................................. 64 1945-1989 ....................................................................................................................................... 65 AFTER 1989 ....................................................................................................................................... 67 CURRENT ISSUES IN POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS .......................................................................................... 69 Prejudice, stereotypes and non-violent anti-Semitism ............................................................... 70 Jewish music after 1989 .............................................................................................................. 72 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 74 CHAPTER 2: COLLECTING: BETWEEN MISSION AND APPROPRIATION ............................................ 75 THE PRE-WAR FOLKLORISTS ................................................................................................................... 77 Shmuel Lehman .......................................................................................................................... 77 Positionality ........................................................................................................................................... 79 Motivations; or: Why collect? ................................................................................................................ 84 Giving voice ............................................................................................................................................ 86 Collecting against the critique ............................................................................................................... 87 Lehman’s Colleagues .................................................................................................................. 89 THE POST-WAR COLLECTORS ................................................................................................................. 90 Ben Stonehill (1906-1966) .......................................................................................................... 90 Ruth Rubin (1906-1999) .............................................................................................................. 92 Collecting ............................................................................................................................................... 92 Ethnographic Team of the University of Lodz ............................................................................. 96 Stanisław Wielanek (1949-2016) ................................................................................................ 98 Collecting ............................................................................................................................................... 99 Preserving ............................................................................................................................................ 101 Polish-Jewish Culture ........................................................................................................................... 103 APPROPRIATION? ............................................................................................................................... 104 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 108 CHAPTER 3: AN UNEXPLORED GENRE OF URBAN FOLKLORE? ..................................................... 110 URBAN FOLKLORE ............................................................................................................................... 111 SONGS ............................................................................................................................................