Conference: Yiddish music from the cabarets in the aftermath of WWII

Just after WWII, a time when Jews were attempting to reconstruct themselves, as much individually as collectively, Paris crystallized the hopes of revitalizing Jewish life in Europe, while serving as a point of passage or attachment for survivors in search of a new home. Cultural life was organized by many different structures: Jewish societies, theaters, but also cafes and cabarets, like La Riviera held by Bernard Potock and Dave Cash, le Habibi Club of Sigmunt Berland or the dancing-cabaret Le Zodiac. In the beginning of the 1960s, Dave Cash opens the Cabaret Bagatelle, 29 rue de Clichy. A few years later, he moved and created in the Pigalle neighborhood Le Cabaret Yiddish, which will close in the 1970’s, because of the lack of customers.

Many pictures, posters, press articles and 78 and 33 RPM discs keep alive the traces of the brilliant period of Yiddish cabarets. Between 1948 and 1953, the Elesdisc music label recorded at least 154 songs performed by great artists like Henri Gerro, Dave Cash, Sarah Gorby, Richard Inger, Elvira Boczkowska, Simon Nussbaum, Max Neufeld…

In 2015, The European Institute for Jewish music publishing house released a 6 CD pack gathering more than 120 songs that witness the creative atmosphere of the Jewish cabarets after the war, in which artists dared to mix folklore with samba, nostalgic tangos, swing jazz, in Yiddish, but also in Russian, Hebrew or Romanian.

Order the 6 CD package online

Producer : Les Editions de l’IEMJ
With the participation of : Eléonore Biezunski, Léa Couderc, Hervé Roten