An inside, behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Magid Chronicles by Veretski Pass, in collaboration with Joel Rubin, this lecture details their project development based on the field work of Sofia Magid, the Jewish ethnographer who worked intensively to document Jewish music in Belarus and Ukraine during Stalin’s regime in the 1920s and 30s. Magid’s recordings contain rare examples of women’s songs and instrumental pieces from these regions, which form the nucleus of the lecture.
Veretski Pass and Joel Rubin take the audience through the process of cleaning, deciphering and transcribing the dubs of the cylinders, then arranging, performing and recording them. The lecture presents the material on the original cylinders, and invites the audience to experience how they are interpreted when only fragments exist, and how the musicians shape and form them from their basic form into a recording and performance.
