" New York
Times (August 16, 1998): 32.
In this article, Barry Singer notes the changes Yiddish music underwent as Jews emigrated from Europe to America, and compares the evolving nature of Yiddish folk songs during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to more recent developments in Yiddish music. This article is useful because it allows one to trace an unbroken line from the earliest Yiddish songs regarding immigration to America to musical developments occurring today, even if whatever was distinctly Yiddish about these trends seemed to have been lost or covered over when Yiddish musicians became the creators of American popular culture in the 1940s and 50s.
Warnke, Nina. "Immigrant Popular Culture as Contested Sphere: Yiddish Music Halls,
the Yiddish Press, and the Processes of Americanization, 1900-1910." Theatre
Journal 48, no. 3 (1996): 321-335.
This...
Instead of focusing on the music itself, Warnke's essay looks at the contested space of the Yiddish music hall, where the identity of Jewish immigrants was being established by proxy, on the stage through plays and musicals. This resulted in competing Jewish actors' unions and rival critics assailing those music halls deemed "illegitimate." Warnke argues that over a couple decades, however, these distinctions become blurred as the ongoing debate itself becomes absorbed into the Yiddish-American identity and ultimately expressed again through music. This essay is useful because it gives details regarding the history of Yiddish music halls themselves as well as provides an analysis of the changes going on in Yiddish music itself…
