The Kiselgof Archive, the largest musical record of Jewish life in pre-World War I Eastern Europe.
In 1908 Joel Engel and Lazare Saminsky founded the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music. They were joined by other Jewish musicians and composition students who were attending the St. Petersburg Conservatory. One of their main goals was to collect Jewish songs, and music in order to incorporate Jewish traditional melodies in their compositions. In 1909 an expedition to collect Jewish folk songs throughout Eastern Europe was funded by the society, and led by Susman Kiselgof. This was the first ethnographic expedition into Jewish Eastern Europe, pre-dating Anski’s famed expedition by several years. During the Kiselgof led expedition, the ethnographers used Edison wax cylinders to record a diverse variety of music from Jews living in the Pale of Settlement and beyond. On return to St. Petersburg the members of the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music organized a mass transcription of the music collected. There were over 1000 Edison wax cylinders that were meticulously transcribed. This collection of transcriptions is known as ‘The Kiselgof Archive.’
Daniel’s album Hava Nagila, For Real is the first modern recording that comes directly from these transcriptions.
To Buy 'Hava Nagila, For Real' - go to CDBABY
Here is a real JPG from the Kiselgof Archive.
At the bottom of the page, the song entitled 'A Freilechs,' is the first part of the original transcription of the Chasidic melody which later was changed to become the modern hit 'Hava Nagila.' The Kiselgof archive is comprised of over 1600 similar pages.
