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Isle of Klezbos: "Hert Zikh Aynet & Kostakowsky 7" (Listen Up People! & Dance)

1,726 views · Published 9 September 2013 · 5:00 · Indexed 14 October 2026

Channel: Eve Sicular · 2013 · Music

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Isle of Klezbos sextet performs 4/7/2013 at Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. This medley features first a plaintive vocal, & then traditional 'khosidl' dance tune. Full lyrics & translation below, as published in "Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive," collected from singer Yankl Zipper in Montreal 1955 (this melody is also heard as an instrumental theme in the Yiddish film YIDL MITN FIDL [1936, Poland] starring Molly Picon). Next up in this Brooklyn video is Chusidil #7 from Wolff 'Nat' Kostakowsky's "International Hebrew Wedding Music" (published 1906, 310 Powell St, Brooklyn).  

ISLE of KLEZBOS: Debra Kreisberg - clarinet; Pam Fleming - trumpet; Melissa Fogarty - vocals; Shoko Nagai - accordion; Saskia Lane - acoustic bass; Eve Sicular --drums & bandleader. Arrangements by Eve Sicular. Videography by Rich Brotman & Janene Knox; video editing by Rich Botman. Live audio recording & mixing: David Merrill. This performance audio is also to be released on the upcoming CD,  Isle of Klezbos: Live from Brooklyn.

"Hert Zikh Aynet, Mayne Libe Mentshn" [Listen to Me, My Dear People]
a street mendicant's song (sung by Yankl Zipper, Montreal 1955, Lithuanian Yiddish dialect; collected and translated by Ruth Rubin)

Hert zikh aynet, mayne libe mentshn,
Ay, hert zikh aynet vos ikh vel aykh fregn do!
Ay, vi kumt es aza veytik,
In a kleynem, kleynem fidl?

Listen to me, my dear people, 
Listen to what I am going to ask you here!
Oh, how does so much pain
Come out of such a tiny fiddle?

(This is the first of two similar verses; original ends with spoken "Shenkt a nedove": 
Give alms / Make a donation.)

Published 2007: YIDDISH FOLKSONGS FROM THE RUTH RUBIN ARCHIVE
Edited by Chana Mlotek and Mark Slobin
Wayne State University Press, in cooperation with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

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