Fall 2021 Schedule

Sunday, October 24, 2021
3:00 p.m. (EDT)
In person or virtual

"Ashkenaz Rising: The Near Demise and Contemporary Resurgence of Yiddish Musical Culture" – A Talk by Hankus Netsky.

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By the early 1970s, Eastern European Jewish musical culture had nearly vanished from American Jewish consciousness but, for the past forty-five years, it has seen an unprecedented resurgence, both as a traditional wellspring and a point of departure for diverse creative endeavors. What started as a small revitalization by a handful of klezmer bands and Yiddish performers on the East and West coasts of the US has grown into a multi-disciplinary international movement supporting camps, festivals, web-based communities, hundreds of bands and artists working in a variety of genres in diverse localities, and tens of thousands of participants and fans across the Americas, Europe, Australia and Asia. In this multimedia lecture, I will examine the factors that led to the culture’s near demise and present an overview of an amazing four-decades of cultural rekindling, with personal insights from my vantage point as one of the cultural activists who helped launch the movement.

A multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist, Hankus Netsky is co-chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Improvisation Department and founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band. He has composed extensively for film, theater, and television, collaborated closely on musical projects with Itzhak Perlman, Robin Williams, Joel Grey, Robert Brustein, Theodore Bikel, and poets Jane Hirshfield and Robert Pinsky, and has produced numerous recordings, including ten by the Klezmer Conservatory Band. He is the recipient of a “Forward Fifty” award, a New England Conservatory Outstanding Alumni award, the Yosl Mlotek award for the perpetuation of Yiddish Culture, and NEC’s Louis Krasner and Lawrence Lesser awards for Excellence in Teaching. His essays have been published by the University of California Press, the University of Pennsylvania Press, the University of Scranton Press, Hips Roads, Indiana University Press, and the University Press of America, and Temple University Press published his book, “Klezmer, Music and Community in 20th Century Jewish Philadelphia” in 2015. He has also taught at Hebrew College, Hampshire College, McGill University, and Wesleyan University.

Support the Festival

We need your contribution to support this ongoing celebration of Yiddish culture, so please send a check made out to Haverford College, with Yiddish Culture Festival written on the check or on an accompanying note to: Haverford College, Advancement Services, 370 Lancaster Ave, Haverford, PA 19041.