Cross-cultural musical dialogue for the belarusian-jewish silent film tape
As part of the project, in 2023-2024, a sound track was added to the black-and-white feature film. It incorporated dance melodies found in the Litvak (local Jewish) and local Belarusian repertoire, which is a vivid reflection of the Jewish musical tradition. The film used to be shown only live, but is now available online. You can watch it in two language versions – Belarusian and English.
“The Magic Scissors” was created by the volunteers from the Club of Historical Dances in Barysaw back in 2018. It was an attempt to creatively rethink and preserve the silent memory of the Jewish culture of the place. The place where the last witnesses of the past are the remains of the city architecture, specific local humor, “Jewish” names and notes in the melodies of everyday Belarusian dances. But if the shooting of the film and live screenings to the real scoring by the women’s band were an artistic project to promote the lost Jewish dancing tradition, the current dialogue aims to explore the cultural connections between the two traditions – Belarusian and Jewish ones. To make the local Jewish repertoire visible, as well as to actualize the cross-cultural approach to the study of the Belarusian dance and music heritage.
For six months, the project team has worked with sheet music and sound recordings from the ethnographic archives of researchers of the Belarusian and Jewish tradition, mainly from the 20th century. When preparing the material, Jewish sources of some melodies were found, to which Belarusians danced in the last century and which got through the current amateur ethno-community into the post-folklore environment, i.e. at today’s dance parties. The project participants restored the original structure and Jewish sound of one of the Belarusian tunes. On this example, listening to ethnographic originals from both traditions and modern versions of their performance, one can hear two different and very beautiful musical languages, ornamented in their own ways.
Simultaneously with the research work with the repertoire, with the help of a tutor (a klezmer musician from Finland), Belarusian post-folk musicians studied the peculiarities of performing Yiddish dance melodies and, together with the film director, created the musical space of the silent film. The educational part of the project was prepared taking into account the differences between the Belarusian and Jewish traditions, which had been specifically studied in advance by the project authors. This made it possible for the musicians of the project to learn complex and hitherto unfamiliar material in a short time and taking into account the chosen format. The classes took place in an integrated form, where the musicians were together in a studio, and the tutor was online. Video essays on teaching and rehearsals will be useful for anyone interested in Jewish dance music and wanting to get to know the unrenowned Litvak repertoire. It is also a valuable document of research and creative work with ethnographic material.
The project is supported by the EU4Culture Program
(Goethe Institute) and implemented in 2023-2024.