Songs to Make It Better – Daniel Kahn and Psoy Korolenko
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JVL Introduction
Daniel Kahn is known for putting Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah into Yiddish.
Two new albums have recently been issued by The Unternationale, aka Daniel Kahn and Psoy Korolenko.
We can’t describe it better than does the author of the article below, Uri Schreter:
- “The Third and Fourth Unternationals are much welcomed additions to Kahn and Korolenko’s rich oeuvre. These albums excel on all fronts: They offer ingenious translations and “tradaptations” between Yiddish, English, and Russian, that appeal to multiple levels of fluency; original compositions that weave together Yiddishkayt, politics, irony, and humor; a thought-provoking grand tour of political ideologies, coupled with their overall rejection; and a kaleidoscopic palette of musical hues and historical clues, resulting in a trail of musical-textual breadcrumbs. On top of all this cleverness, Korolenko and Kahn somehow manage to convey a sense of pure fun, of “stupid songs that try to make it better.” And that’s not nothing.”
This article was originally published by In Geveb A Journal of Yiddish Studies on Thu 11 Feb 2021. Read the original here.
Songs to Make It Better: A Review of the Third and Fourth Unternationals by Daniel Kahn and Psoy Korolenko
“…to call something something can be more offensive than calling it nothing.”
—
Apocalypse – something
Irony – something
Stupid songs that try to make it better –
something, something, something
Album booklet, The Fourth Unternational; “Israel Something,” The Fourth Unternational
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Thank you for this or as great granddad might have said ” a sheynem dank!”
I hope others have appreciated your publishing this.