A Ukrainian Jewish Fiddle player

Available for over a year

In 1913 the writer S An-sky and his team visited about 70 towns in the Pale of Settlement, in what is now Ukraine, collecting folktales, folklore, folk and religious music, physical objects, and photographs. Dr Phil Alexander, a klezmer player and music lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, reveals how a transnational online digitisation project is helping to bring this hand-written music, and its mutli-lingual annotations, back into the world after more than a hundred years. This essay, which is part of a series focusing on new research into historical documents, introduces us to Motl Reyder's tunebook of traditional Jewish line dances, goodnight tunes for newlyweds, and more Recorded in Edinburgh by Minnie Harrop and edited by Robyn Read With music performance by Phil Alexander on his accordion and with the trio Triptic