Ethnic & Foreign Language

Alpine Dreaming: The Helvetia Records Story, 1920-1924
Various Artists

Released: August 31, 2018 • Catalogue: ARCH 8002 • UPC: 778632908505

In 1920 Ferdinand Ingold, a poor but visionary Swiss settler in the small Wisconsin town of Monroe, audaciously launched a record label, Helvetia—invoking his homeland’s ancient name and celebrating its musical heritage. Praised in the immigrant press yet beset by fiscal challenges, Helvetia issued a scant 36 sides. Scattered, scarce, and nearly forgotten, Ingold’s entire catalog, newly restored and remastered, is offered here. Rollicking and somber, sentimental and lusty, these Swiss, German, and Tyrolean tunes and songs feature virtuoso instrumental combos, vocal quartets, and especially yodelers from Swiss communities in New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin. A 60-page booklet by folklorist Jim Leary, richly illustrated with rare images, offers extensive background on the label, performers, and each track, along with bilingual lyrics unlocked by a team of translators tackling dialectical challenges. Illuminating one of the first American record labels established by an immigrant for his own community, Alpine Dreaming both recalls a bygone era and resonates with all who seek better New World lives while remembering their homelands. Produced in cooperation with the Mills Music Library and the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. List price: $27.99

More

Attractive Hebrews: The Lambert Yiddish Cylinders, 1901-1905
Various Artists

Released: August 26, 2016 • Catalogue: ARCH 8001 • UPC: 778632906747

Recordings of arias from long-forgotten Yiddish operas, street-corner ballads, cantorial hymns, and odd traditional folk songs—these lost prizes of Jewish Old World history landed sideways into a 1903 Lambert Company catalog under the description, “Attractive Hebrew Selections.” The records are like an ethnographer’s dream, but listen closely and you will hear something more: the difficult assimilation experience of Jewish émigrés arriving on America’s shores at the turn of the last century. While the dandy “Up to Date Boychik” caricatured in 1904 sheet music (portrayed on the front cover) offered one path of “Americanization,” an emerging Yiddish theater scene in New York, built on recognizable Eastern European traditions, offered another. Here, the great works of Abraham Goldfaden and “Professor” Moshe Hurwitz were performed to eager audiences; here, the voices of Solomon Smulewitz, Kalman Juvelier, William Nemrell, and “King of Comic Singers” Dave Franklin rang out supreme. These are the earliest known Yiddish recordings in the world, and this anthology will be the first time since their issue over a century ago that the cylinders will be heard by those able to understand their pithy and colorful language. 56-page booklet included, with notes and Yiddish-to-English translations by Henry Sapoznik. Produced in cooperation with the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture and the Mills Music Library of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. List price: $17.99

More